Palimpsests and the Literary Imagination of Medieval England: Collected Essays (The New Middle Ages)

T H E N E W M I DDL E AG E S BONNIE WHEELER, Series Editor The New Middle Ages is a series dedicated to pluridisciplinary studies of medieval cultures, with particular emphasis on recuperating women’s history and on feminist and gender analyses. This peer-reviewed series includes both scholarly monographs and essay collections.

PUBLISHED BY PALGRAVE: Women in the Medieval Islamic World: Power, Patronage, and Piety edited by Gavin R. G. Hambly The Ethics of Nature in the Middle Ages: On Boccaccio’s Poetaphysics by Gregory B. Stone Presence and Presentation:Women in the Chinese Literati Tradition edited by Sherry J. Mou The Lost Love Letters of Heloise and Abelard: Perceptions of Dialogue in Twelfth-Century France by Constant J. Mews Understanding Scholastic Thought with Foucault by Philipp W. Rosemann For Her Good Estate:The Life of Elizabeth de Burgh by Frances A. Underhill Constructions of Widowhood and Virginity in the Middle Ages edited by Cindy L. Carlson and Angela Jane Weisl Motherhood and Mothering in Anglo-Saxon England by Mary Dockray-Miller Listening to Heloise:The Voice of a TwelfthCentury Woman edited by Bonnie Wheeler

Crossing the Bridge: Comparative Essays on Medieval European and Heian Japanese Women Writers edited by Barbara Stevenson and Cynthia Ho Engaging Words:The Culture of Reading in the Later Middle Ages by Laurel Amtower Robes and Honor:The Medieval World of Investiture edited by Stewart Gordon Representing Rape in Medieval and Early Modern Literature edited by Elizabeth Robertson and Christine M. Rose Same Sex Love and Desire among Women in the Middle Ages edited by Francesca Canadé Sautman and Pamela Sheingorn Sight and Embodiment in the Middle Ages: Ocular Desires by Suzannah Biernoff Listen, Daughter:The Speculum Virginum and the Formation of Religious Women in the Middle Ages edited by Constant J. Mews Science, the Singular, and the Question of Theology by Richard A. Lee, Jr.

The Postcolonial Middle Ages edited by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen

Gender in Debate from the Early Middle Ages to the Renaissance edited by Thelma S. Fenster and Clare A. Lees

Chaucer’s Pardoner and Gender Theory: Bodies of Discourse by Robert S. Sturges

Malory’s Morte D’Arthur: Remaking Arthurian Tradition by Catherine Batt

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The Vernacular Spirit: Essays on Medieval Religious Literature edited by Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Duncan Robertson, and Nancy Warren

The Texture of Society: Medieval Women in the Southern Low Countries edited by Ellen E. Kittell and Mary A. Suydam

Popular Piety and Art in the Late Middle Ages: Image Worship and Idolatry in England 1350–1500 by Kathleen Kamerick

Charlemagne’s Mustache: And Other Cultural Clusters of a Dark Age by Paul Edward Dutton

Absent Narratives, Manuscript Textuality, and Literary Structure in Late Medieval England by Elizabeth Scala Creating Community with Food and Drink in Merovingian Gaul by Bonnie Effros Representations of Early Byzantine Empresses: Image and Empire by Anne McClanan Encountering Medieval Textiles and Dress: Objects,Texts, Images edited by Désirée G. Koslin and Janet Snyder Eleanor of Aquitaine: Lord and Lady edited by Bonnie Wheeler and John Carmi Parsons Isabel La Católica, Queen of Castile: Critical Essays edited by David A. Boruchoff Homoeroticism and Chivalry: Discourses of Male Same-Sex Desire in the Fourteenth Century by Richard E. Zeikowitz Portraits of Medieval Women: Family, Marriage, and Politics in England 1225–1350 by Linda E. Mitchell Eloquent Virgins: From Thecla to Joan of Arc by Maud Burnett McInerney The Persistence of Medievalism: Narrative Adventures in Contemporary Culture by Angela Jane Weisl

Troubled Vision: Gender, Sexuality, and Sight in Medieval Text and Image edited by Emma Campbell and Robert Mills Queering Medieval Genres by Tison Pugh Sacred Place in Early Medieval Neoplatonism by L. Michael Harrington The Middle Ages at Work edited by Kellie Robertson and Michael Uebel Chaucer’s Jobs by David R. Carlson Medievalism and Orientalism:Three Essays on Literature, Architecture and Cultural Identity by John M. Ganim Queer Love in the Middle Ages by Anna Kłosowska Performing Women in the Middle Ages: Sex, Gender, and the Iberian Lyric by Denise K. Filios Necessary Conjunctions:The Social Self in Medieval England by David Gary Shaw Visual Culture and the German Middle Ages edited by Kathryn Starkey and Horst Wenzel Medieval Paradigms: Essays in Honor of Jeremy duQuesnay Adams,Volumes 1 and 2 edited by Stephanie Hayes-Healy

Capetian Women edited by Kathleen D. Nolan

False Fables and Exemplary Truth in Later Middle English Literature by Elizabeth Allen

Joan of Arc and Spirituality edited by Ann W. Astell and Bonnie Wheeler

Ecstatic Transformation: On the Uses of Alterity in the Middle Ages by Michael Uebel

Sacred and Secular in Medieval and Early Modern Cultures: New Essays edited by Lawrence Besserman

Mindful Spirit in Late Medieval Literature: Essays in Honor of Elizabeth D. Kirk edited by Bonnie Wheeler

Tolkien’s Modern Middle Ages edited by Jane Chance and Alfred K. Siewers

Medieval Fabrications: Dress,Textiles, Clothwork, and Other Cultural Imaginings edited by E. Jane Burns

Representing Righteous Heathens in Late Medieval England by Frank Grady

Was the Bayeux Tapestry Made in France?:The Case for St. Florent of Saumur by George Beech

Byzantine Dress: Representations of Secular Dress in Eighth- to Twelfth-Century Painting by Jennifer L. Ball

Women, Power, and Religious Patronage in the Middle Ages by Erin L. Jordan

The Laborer’s Two Bodies: Labor and the “Work” of the Text in Medieval Britain, 1350–1500 by Kellie Robertson

Hybridity, Identity, and Monstrosity in Medieval Britain: On Difficult Middles by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen

The Dogaressa of Venice, 1250–1500:Wife and Icon by Holly S. Hurlburt Logic,Theology, and Poetry in Boethius, Abelard, and Alan of Lille:Words in the Absence of Things by Eileen C. Sweeney

Medieval Go-betweens and Chaucer’s Pandarus by Gretchen Mieszkowski The Surgeon in Medieval English Literature by Jeremy J. Citrome Temporal Circumstances: Form and History in the Canterbury Tales by Lee Patterson

The Theology of Work: Peter Damian and the Medieval Religious Renewal Movement by Patricia Ranft

Erotic Discourse and Early English Religious Writing by Lara Farina

On the Purification of Women: Churching in Northern France, 1100–1500 by Paula M. Rieder

Odd Bodies and Visible Ends in Medieval Literature by Sachi Shimomura

Writers of the Reign of Henry II:Twelve Essays edited by Ruth Kennedy and Simon Meecham-Jones

On Farting: Language and Laughter in the Middle Ages by Valerie Allen

Lonesome Words:The Vocal Poetics of the Old English Lament and the African-American Blues Song by M.G. McGeachy

Women and Medieval Epic: Gender, Genre, and the Limits of Epic Masculinity edited by Sara S. Poor and Jana K. Schulman

Performing Piety: Musical Culture in Medieval English Nunneries by Anne Bagnell Yardley

Race, Class, and Gender in “Medieval” Cinema edited by Lynn T. Ramey and Tison Pugh

The Flight from Desire: Augustine and Ovid to Chaucer by Robert R. Edwards

Allegory and Sexual Ethics in the High Middle Ages by Noah D. Guynn

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England and Iberia in the Middle Ages, 12th–15th Century: Cultural, Literary, and Political Exchanges edited by María Bullón-Fernández The Medieval Chastity Belt: A Myth-Making Process by Albrecht Classen Claustrophilia:The Erotics of Enclosure in Medieval Literature by Cary Howie

Hildegard of Bingen’s Unknown Language: An Edition,Translation, and Discussion by Sarah L. Higley Medieval Romance and the Construction of Heterosexuality by Louise M. Sylvester Communal Discord, Child Abduction, and Rape in the Later Middle Ages by Jeremy Goldberg

Cannibalism in High Medieval English Literature by Heather Blurton

Lydgate Matters: Poetry and Material Culture in the Fifteenth Century edited by Lisa H. Cooper and Andrea Denny-Brown

The Drama of Masculinity and Medieval English Guild Culture by Christina M. Fitzgerald

Sexuality and Its Queer Discontents in Middle English Literature by Tison Pugh

Chaucer’s Visions of Manhood by Holly A. Crocker

Sex, Scandal, and Sermon in FourteenthCentury Spain: Juan Ruiz’s Libro de Buen Amor by Louise M. Haywood

The Literary Subversions of Medieval Women by Jane Chance Manmade Marvels in Medieval Culture and Literature by Scott Lightsey American Chaucers by Candace Barrington Representing Others in Medieval Iberian Literature by Michelle M. Hamilton Paradigms and Methods in Early Medieval Studies edited by Celia Chazelle and Felice Lifshitz The King and the Whore: King Roderick and La Cava by Elizabeth Drayson Langland’s Early Modern Identities by Sarah A. Kelen Cultural Studies of the Modern Middle Ages edited by Eileen A. Joy, Myra J. Seaman, Kimberly K. Bell, and Mary K. Ramsey

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The Erotics of Consolation: Desire and Distance in the Late Middle Ages edited by Catherine E. Léglu and Stephen J. Milner Battlefronts Real and Imagined:War, Border, and Identity in the Chinese Middle Period edited by Don J. Wyatt Wisdom and Her Lovers in Medieval and Early Modern Hispanic Literature by Emily C. Francomano Power, Piety, and Patronage in Late Medieval Queenship: Maria de Luna by Nuria Silleras-Fernandez In the Light of Medieval Spain: Islam, the West, and the Relevance of the Past edited by Simon R. Doubleday and David Coleman, foreword by Giles Tremlett Chaucerian Aesthetics by Peggy A. Knapp Memory, Images, and the English Corpus Christi Drama by Theodore K. Lerud

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Cultural Diversity in the British Middle Ages: Archipelago, Island, England edited by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen

Strange Beauty: Ecocritical Approaches to Early Medieval Landscape by Alfred K. Siewers

Excrement in the Late Middle Ages: Sacred Filth and Chaucer’s Fecopoetics by Susan Signe Morrison

Berenguela of Castile (1180–1246) and Political Women in the High Middle Ages by Miriam Shadis

Authority and Subjugation in Writing of Medieval Wales edited by Ruth Kennedy and Simon Meecham-Jones

Julian of Norwich’s Legacy: Medieval Mysticism and Post-Medieval Reception edited by Sarah Salih and Denise N. Baker

The Medieval Poetics of the Reliquary: Enshrinement, Inscription, Performance by Seeta Chaganti

Medievalism, Multilingualism, and Chaucer by Mary Catherine Davidson

The Legend of Charlemagne in the Middle Ages: Power, Faith, and Crusade edited by Matthew Gabriele and Jace Stuckey The Poems of Oswald von Wolkenstein: An English Translation of the Complete Works (1376/77–1445) by Albrecht Classen

The Letters of Heloise and Abelard: A Translation of Their Complete Correspondence and Related Writings translated and edited by Mary Martin McLaughlin with Bonnie Wheeler Women and Wealth in Late Medieval Europe edited by Theresa Earenfight

Women and Experience in Later Medieval Writing: Reading the Book of Life edited by Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker and Liz Herbert McAvoy

Visual Power and Fame in René d’Anjou, Geoffrey Chaucer, and the Black Prince by SunHee Kim Gertz

Ethics and Eventfulness in Middle English Literature: Singular Fortunes by J. Allan Mitchell

Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog: Medieval Studies and New Media by Brantley L. Bryant

Maintenance, Meed, and Marriage in Medieval English Literature by Kathleen E. Kennedy

Margaret Paston’s Piety by Joel T. Rosenthal

The Post-Historical Middle Ages edited by Elizabeth Scala and Sylvia Federico Constructing Chaucer: Author and Autofiction in the Critical Tradition by Geoffrey W. Gust Queens in Stone and Silver:The Creation of a Visual Imagery of Queenship in Capetian France by Kathleen Nolan Finding Saint Francis in Literature and Art edited by Cynthia Ho, Beth A. Mulvaney, and John K. Downey

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Gender and Power in Medieval Exegesis by Theresa Tinkle Antimercantilism in Late Medieval English Literature by Roger A. Ladd Magnificence and the Sublime in Medieval Aesthetics: Art, Architecture, Literature, Music edited by C. Stephen Jaeger Medieval and Early Modern Devotional Objects in Global Perspective: Translations of the Sacred edited by Elizabeth Robertson and Jennifer Jahner

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Late Medieval Jewish Identities: Iberia and Beyond edited by Carmen Caballero-Navas and Esperanza Alfonso

Street Scenes: Late Medieval Acting and Performance by Sharon Aronson-Lehavi

Outlawry in Medieval Literature by Timothy S. Jones

Women and Economic Activities in Late Medieval Ghent by Shennan Hutton

Women and Disability in Medieval Literature by Tory Vandeventer Pearman The Lesbian Premodern edited by Noreen Giffney, Michelle M. Sauer, and Diane Watt

Palimpsests and the Literary Imagination of Medieval England: Collected Essays edited by Leo Carruthers, Raeleen Chai-Elsholz, and Tatjana Silec

Crafting Jewishness in Medieval England: Legally Absent,Virtually Present by Miriamne Ara Krummel

Heloise and the Paraclete: A Twelfth-Century Quest (forthcoming) by Mary Martin McLaughlin

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PALIMPSESTS AND THE LITERARY IMAGINATION OF MEDIEVAL ENGLAND COLLECTED ESSAYS

Edited by Leo Carruthers, Raeleen Chai-Elsholz, and Tatjana Silec

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PALIMPSESTS AND THE LITERARY IMAGINATION OF MEDIEVAL ENGLAND

Copyright © Leo Carruthers, Raeleen Chai-Elsholz, and Tatjana Silec, 2011. All rights reserved. First published in 2011 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978–0–230–10026–8 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Palimpsests and the literary imagination of medieval England : collected essays / edited by Leo Carruthers, Raeleen Chai-Elsholz, and Tatjana Silec. p. cm.—(The new Middle Ages) Dedicated to André Crépin on the occasion of his eightieth birthday. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978–0–230–10026–8 1. English literature—History and criticism. 2. English literature—Old English, ca. 450–1100—Sources. 3. English literature—Middle English, 1100–1500—Sources. 4. English literature—Early modern, 1500–1700— Sources. 5. Palimpsests. 6. Transmission of texts—History. I. Carruthers, Leo M. II. Chai-Elsholz, Raeleen, 1967– III. Silec, Tatjana, 1976– PR161.P35 2011 820.9⬘39—dc22

2010039074

A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: April 2011 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America.

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CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

xiii

Acknowledgments

xv

Homage to André Crépin, membre de l’Institut, Honorary OBE Leo Carruthers

xvii

List of Abbreviations

xix

Introduction: Palimpsests and “Palimpsestuous” Reinscriptions Raeleen Chai-Elsholz

Part I 1

2

1

Permanence and Impermanence of Writing on the Page

An Anglo-Saxon Palimpsest from Fleury: Orléans, Bibliothèque Municipale MS 342 (290) Adrian Papahagi

21

Recovering Anglo-Saxon Erasures: Some Questions, Tools, and Techniques Peter A. Stokes

35

3

Some Psalter Glosses in Their Immediate Context Jane Roberts

61

4

The Palimpsest and Old English Homiletic Composition Paul E. Szarmach

81

5

“Ic Beda” . . . “Cwæð Beda”: Reinscribing Bede in the Old English Historia ecclesiastica gentis anglorum Sharon M. Rowley

6

Vernacular Engravings in Late Medieval England Florence Bourgne

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CONTENTS

Part II

Impermanence and Accumulation in the Literary Imagination

7

Rewriting Genres: Beowulf as Epic Romance Leo Carruthers

8

Palimpsestic Philomela: Reinscription in Chaucer’s “Legend of Philomela” Gila Aloni

9 10

11

The Middle English Breton Lays and the Mists of Origin Claire Vial

139

157 175

Enquiries into the Textual History of the Seventeenth-Century Sir Lambewell (London, British Library, Additional 27897) Colette Stévanovitch

193

Elucidations: Bringing to Light the Aesthetic Underwriting of the Matière de Bretagne in John Boorman’s Excalibur Jean-Marc Elsholz

205

Bibliography

227

Notes on Contributors

251

Index of Manuscripts Cited

255

Index

259

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André Crépin in full regalia at the Institut de France. Photo courtesy of JeanClaude Martin.

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ILLUSTRATIONS

Frontispiece: André Crépin in full regalia at the Institut de France (photo courtesy of Jean-Claude Martin) 1.1

1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 2.9

3.1

6.1

6.2

Orléans, Bibliothèque Municipale MS 342 (290), pp. 68–69, upper script. (Photos in Figures 1.1 to 1.5 courtesy of the Médiathèque d’Orléans.) Orléans, BM MS 342 (290), p. 35, lower script Orléans, BM MS 342 (290), p. 34 The same image enhanced by Dr. Peter A. Stokes Orléans, BM MS 342 (290), p. 35, upper script Intensity curves Example of a histogram Histograms for a yellow square Histograms for a desert scene, where the sky is blue and the sand yellow. (Photo by the author) Model “erasure” and accompanying histogram Three types of histograms Results of channel manipulation. The upper one (a) is original, the lower (b) is enhanced ImageViewer control panel (software by the author) An improperly “enhanced” image. The upper one (a) is original, the lower (b) is altered. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 111, p. 88 (by permission of the Master and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge) London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 427 (Lambeth Psalter), fol. 17r (courtesy of the trustees of Lambeth Palace Library) Amor vincit omnia. Graffito from St. Mary & St. Clement, Clavering (Essex), after 1360 (drawing by Florence Bourgne) “Well fare my lady Katherine.” Graffito from St. Mary, Lydgate (Suffolk), after 1370 (drawing by Florence Bourgne)

xi

25 26 27 27 28 39 41 42 42 43 44 47 52

55

69

130

131

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

T

he editors are grateful to their friends inside and outside academia who have generously offered advice, help, and moral support as this book made its way from a project in honor of André Crépin to the present finished volume. We also wish to thank the Médiathèque d’Orléans; the Master and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge; and the trustees of Lambeth Palace Library for their kind permission to publish images of manuscripts from their collections. Grateful acknowledgement is made for many years of lively and helpful discussions with Marguerite-Marie Dubois, the doyenne of medieval English studies in France. Born in 1915, she recently celebrated her ninety-fifth birthday. In 1940, at the age of twenty-five, she became the first woman to be employed as a lecturer in the English department at the Sorbonne. Many years after her retirement from the post to which André Crépin succeeded in 1983, she continues to make contributions to the field and to help and mentor younger scholars. LC

I am indebted, as always, to professors Grace Morgan Armstrong and Charles M. Brand, my mentors at Bryn Mawr College, for their hard work and generosity, as well as to André Crépin and Leo Carruthers, at the Sorbonne and beyond. The greatest debt of all is owed first and foremost to my mother and father, who instilled in me a love of learning right from the start and gave unstintingly to help me pursue it. RCE I wish to thank Leo Carruthers and Raeleen Chai-Elsholz for giving me the opportunity to work with them on this book (and on the conference that preceded it). It has been a wonderful experience—and something of an eye-opener for a young doctor like me! TS

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HOMAGE TO ANDRÉ CRÉPIN, MEMBRE DE L’INSTITUT, HONORARY OBE

T

his volume is dedicated to André Crépin on the occasion of his eightieth birthday as a tribute to his life and work. Born on June 9, 1928, André has had a long, distinguished career in the field of Old and Middle English language, literature, and history. After many years lecturing in the Sorbonne’s English department, in 1970 he was appointed professor of English in the newly created University of Picardy at Amiens, the town where he grew up and where he still lives. In 1983 he returned to the Sorbonne (reconstituted under the new name of Université Paris 4-Sorbonne), succeeding Marguerite-Marie Dubois as professor of English philology, a post he held until his retirement in 1995. In addition to his research and teaching, André ably served the university community through his involvement in administration, being for many years chair of the English department and head of the Doctoral School of Medieval Studies at Paris 4. André Crépin’s inf luence in those years was immense and has not abated. It can safely be said that the majority of French scholars working in the field of Old and Middle English today—certainly those who were at the university in his teaching days—are his past pupils or graduate students. Even the younger generation, those who never had the opportunity to attend André’s lectures, have in many cases been subjected to his penetrating criticism as an examiner of their doctoral thesis. Since retiring, André has remained very active in research, publishing books and articles on Old English linguistics, poetics, and metrics, as well as editing and translating Beowulf into French (which he has done more than once, in 1991 and again in 2007). His translation of The Canterbury Tales appeared in 2000.1 He was also president of the AMAES, the national association for medieval English studies, from its foundation in 1970 up to 2006. Many have heard André speak at international conferences in France and abroad. He also takes pains to maintain friendships with

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xviii

HOM AGE TO A N DR É C R É PI N

medievalists in other countries and to make known the publications of his younger colleagues working in France. While André Crépin has been honored in many ways, including an OBE from the British government, there can be no doubt that a crowning moment came in 2002 when he entered the Institut de France, elected as a member of its Académie des Inscriptions et des Belles-Lettres, sister to the Académie Française. This is not only the highest possible recognition that France’s senior scholars can grant to one of their number, but it was also a remarkable first: in the entire history of the Institut, no specialist in English language and literature, let alone Old and Middle English, had ever before been elected. French scholars in both modern and medieval studies were rightly filled with gratitude and admiration at André’s achievement. “Palimpsests,” the theme of the collection of essays presented here, seems peculiarly apt to celebrate the rich variety of André Crépin’s many research interests. The book is offered as a token of respect and affection by his students, colleagues, and friends. Leo Carruthers President, AMAES (Association des Médiévistes Anglicistes de l’Enseignement Supérieur), Director, Centre d’Études Médiévales Anglaises (CÉMA), Paris 4-Sorbonne Note 1. The first forty years (1967 to 2007) of publications by André Crépin are listed in Danielle Buschinger and Arlette Sancery, eds. Mélanges de langue, littérature et civilisation offerts à André Crépin à l’occasion de son quatrevingtième anniversaire, Médiévales 44 (Amiens: Presses du Centre d’Études Médiévales, Université de Picardie–Jules Verne, 2008), pp. iii–xvi.

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ABBREVIATIONS

ACMRS AMAES ASE ASMMF ASNC

Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies Association des Médiévistes Anglicistes de l’Enseignement Supérieur Anglo-Saxon England, a Cambridge University Press serial publication Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic, University of Cambridge Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana British Library Bibliothèque Municipale Bibliothèque nationale de France

BAV BL BM BnF CCCC or Cambridge, CCC Cambridge, Corpus Christi College CCSL Corpus Christianorum Series Latina CÉMA Centre d’Études Médiévales Anglaises, Université Paris-Sorbonne (Paris 4) CNRS Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France CLA Lowe, Codices Latini Antiquiores CSASE Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England CSML Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature CUL Cambridge University Library EEMF Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger) EETS Early English Text Society (o.s. 1–319, e.s. 1–126, and s.s. 1–19 available from Boydell & Brewer; subsequent o.s. and s.s. available from Oxford University Press) e.s. extra series IRHT Institut de Recherches et d’Histoire des Textes

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xx

MHRA MLN MRTS N&Q o.s. PMLA SPCK TEAMS s.s.

A BBR E V I AT ION S

Modern Humanities Research Association Modern Language Notes Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies Notes and Queries original series Publications of the Modern Language Association Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge Consortium for the Teaching of the Middle Ages supplementary series

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INTRODUCTION: PALIMPSESTS AND “PALIMPSESTUOUS” REINSCRIPTIONS Raeleen Chai-Elsholz

This introduction analyzes the term “palimpsest” in relation to the various types of artifacts of cultural production discussed in the volume’s essays. Au Moyen Âge, créer signifiait re- créer, réorganiser une matière reÇue. [In the Middle Ages, to create meant to re- create, to rearrange existing material.] André Crépin, “Introduction,” in Geoffrey Chaucer, Les Contes de Canterbury et Autres Œuvres, trans. and ed. André Crépin, Jean-Jacques Blanchot, Florence Bourgne, et al. (Paris: Laffont, 2010), p. x.

H

owever much medieval people valued and depended on the spoken word, an immaterial legacy handed down with loss or enrichment, the ancient adage, verba volant scripta manent, was nevertheless true then, as now. Yet the inscribed record, like the memory of what was said, could fade over time. Documents could be erased or destroyed. Unlike uttered words, though, effaced inscriptions from the Middle Ages sometimes can be recovered. Because of this, medieval manuscripts that have been palimpsested—their original inscription rubbed or washed away to provide a fresh writing surface—hold an undeniable attraction for the modern scholar. Palimpsests fascinate as witnesses to the disappearance of a text, a scribal hand, or a provenance, and for their potential to yield them up again. They can shed light on the genesis of the existing text, as well as on its place within a tradition and within the history of the parchment on which it was inscribed. The quest for the primary text of a palimpsest opens more broadly onto the pursuit of the origins of a literary work, of what came before, of the history that anteceded the memory that has survived. Erasure is a prerequisite of reinscription, and so it may be said that

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destruction paves the way for re- creation. Thus the palimpsest is an image of the process of adaptation, translation, and rewriting that shapes a considerable part of medieval literary productions. This volume situates the various types of palimpsest within the creative dynamics underlying the composition of works in and about medieval England. In this collection, the palimpsest under investigation may be a literal one—that is, a writing surface “smoothed over/rubbed again”—or a metonymy for works reinscribed in a more or less clear line of descent from a so-called original. From as early as classical antiquity, the term “palimpsest” has been used to represent both kinds of layerings: the textual strata of the paleographical artifact and the analogous intertextuality of the literary palimpsest.1 Scholars now have called for an examination of the material phenomenon alongside the conceptual one; this kind of “literary paleography” is, in fact, a primary focus of the present volume.2 Yet how can such diverse concepts and phenomena be grouped under a single term? What are the intersections between them? Perhaps a typology in lieu of a justification will suffice. The two types of palimpsest dealt with in this volume correspond to the definitions of “text” versus “work” cited by Roger Chartier in his exploration of the particular context of reinscription. Chartier reminds us that texts have been defined as being tied to the material circumstances that make it possible to read them, whereas works transcend their possible material incarnations.3 Thus it is understood that the material palimpsest concerns texts, while works, by contrast, may circulate independently of their physical manifestations and cross-pollinate with their predecessors, contemporaries, and successors. In distinguishing between literal and metaphorical palimpsests, it may be useful to consider their respective focuses of study. In the case of the former, the parchment is mined for the lower writing. Material considerations, encompassing paleographical and codicological aspects, are of utmost importance. The physical medium is the locus of memory, for it is by scrutinizing the underwriting in conjunction with the context of its overwriting that information can be gleaned about provenance and intellectual exchanges, utility and taste, and scriptoria and expertise. Except in the case of correction or revision, the effaced text hardly ever bears a relationship to the text written over it. A noteworthy instance of erasure and overwriting in an otherwise homogeneous text occurs in the magnificent Codex Amiatinus. An analysis of the underwriting of its reinscribed dedication caused this pandect to be identified in the late nineteenth century with the gift that Abbot Ceolfrith († 716) of Wearmouth-Jarrow had intended for St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. In the great majority of palimpsests, however, the lower text has only the writing surface in common with the upper text. The memory that the text

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was once something else, that the codex was once elsewhere or once someone else’s, inhabits the parchment. Literary palimpsests, on the other hand, are reinscriptions that implicitly or explicitly point to their own genealogy, whether in the title, through reuse of the names of characters in it, resemblance of plot, generic form or argument, and/or by referring to the (factual or imaginary) original or its author. Theorists view these and other intertextual effects, which very aptly have been called “literature’s memory,” more or less broadly as the literary interplay of cultural references, or, more narrowly, as actual copresence (a text within another) or identifiable derivation.4 In his book Palimpsests, Gérard Genette reintroduced the neologism “palimpsestuous” to denote the value added of a literary palimpsest’s layers that lies in their relationship with each other, whereas “palimpsestic” means “like a palimpsest” in terms of a layered structure.5 The ancestry of a literary palimpsest may be examined extensively, but it is the overwriting that is generally subjected to the most intense analysis. Reinscriptions have been welcomed as evidence of how their forebears were received—that is, ever since reception theory gained currency among medievalists. The basic tenet, that the text or work should be “grasped in its becoming rather than as a fixed entity,”6 brings to the fore another difference between types of palimpsest. Medieval palimpsest manuscripts are “fixed entities.” They have stopped “becoming” if only because they have, over time, attained the status of museum pieces on which it is now forbidden to write. In fact, because of the extrinsic value they have acquired, medieval palimpsests, like manuscripts of all types from antiquity, the Middle Ages, and later, are in danger of eluding the scholar’s grasp. Having become commodities in an increasingly limited market, the cycle of buying and selling them for financial gain keeps them from entering (or may cause their sale from) libraries and institutions that promote the study of such texts.7 Literary works, by contrast, can continue their process of “becoming,” not least because the possibilities of transtextuality are endless. Likewise, the studies devoted to them and the number of editions of them are theoretically unlimited. With this observation, however, we have come full circle. The medieval palimpsest itself is a paleographical material artifact, yet when housed in a setting conducive to its study, its text(s) can be recovered, examined, edited, and published. Thus the medieval text is lifted from the manuscript page by analysis and expansion through scholarship in ways not so very different from literary works. Analysis of “works” furthermore raises questions similar to those complicating the identification of “texts”: both involve “such virtually unresolvable issues as at what point the process of abridgment, alteration, and scribal error creates a ‘new’ text rather

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than a ‘version’ of a given exemplar.”8 In cases like these, what are the offspring of a text but newborn works? Given the similar iterative possibilities of material and metaphorical palimpsests, it is not always possible, or even desirable, to adhere strictly or systematically to the distinction between text and work as it relates to reinscription. Fuller attention should now be given to the constituent elements of the palimpsest, defined as “a work or surface with a second text or image superimposed over an effaced original.”9 Here, art historian Leslie Brubaker helpfully enriches the notion of reinscription to include image as well as text. Neither should be excluded from a study of palimpsests, all the more so because text can function pictorially and images can present words. In pointing to unspecified “surfaces” as the foundation for new material, Brubaker allows for media of all types: papyrus, bark, paper, slate, wax, plaster, stone, and others. A whole new crop of palimpsest metaphors, not to mention practices analogous to textual recovery, can be imagined when the definition is permitted to accommodate such media as film, for as one critic has boldly stated, “[T]he book has now ceased to be the root-metaphor of the age; the screen has taken its place.”10 By surveying metaphorical palimpsests side by side with palimpsested and otherwise modified manuscripts, it is hoped that the ways in which the imagination of medieval writers and their audiences was shaped by literary recycling will be elucidated to some small degree. Palimpsesting, in all its usual senses, is indeed an act of recycling:11 writing surfaces are washed and reused, just as their content may be digested and then offered up anew . . . like the cud of a ruminant?12 Even where that famous monastic analogy is inapplicable, Chartier’s use of the term “incarnations” in reference to reinscriptions underscores the physicality of literary artifacts. Writing has been interpreted as a way to control the fear of oblivion because it preserves traces of the past. Erasure, in this mind- set, was tantamount to forgetting.13 Yet was the dread of disappearing from the written record really a constant in European societies from the earliest of modern times? Or, more to the point, was erasure consistently viewed as something to be feared? Without going so far as to claim that the specter of palimpsesting loomed large over authors and scribes, one may certainly posit an anxiety over the possibility of the destruction of manuscripts or the disappearance of texts. Even if palimpsesting was hardly ever done for the sole purpose of consigning a text to oblivion, erasure was a frequent occurrence. A glimpse at the typical medieval scribe’s equipment shows that implements for rubbing out featured alongside as many instruments for page preparation and writing respectively: together with the calamus, stylus, or quill pen could be found “chalk, two pumice stones, two ink

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horns, a sharp knife, two razors for erasing, a ‘punctorium’, an awl, lead, a straight edge, and a ruling stick”; after the thirteenth century, spectacles might be added to the list.14 The prospect of erasure went hand in hand with suspicions of faulty copying or deliberate changes to texts. Not without reason has fixing or maintaining control over the letter of the text been called a “chimerical task.”15 It was apparently just such a concern that animated the author of the New Testament book of the Apocalypse, a work as well known to the monastic copyist of the Middle Ages as it was to his early Christian forebears. The warning at the end of the book threatens that “if any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book; and if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the Book of Life” (Rev. 22.18–19).16 This was not the only kind of admonition to find its way into the margins and colophons of medieval manuscripts. From anathemas menacing book thieves and incompetent scribes to legends such as the one in which a precious manuscript falls overboard during a crossing—to be found washed up on shore three days later, having sustained miraculously little water damage17—the loss of texts or the codex that contains them appears as a subject of concern within medieval narratives as well as between the lines and in the margins of the manuscript page. It is now time to ref lect on how the essays in this volume enrich our understanding of the literary imagination of medieval England. Texts destroyed by erasure, accidents, or recycling are at the core of Peter A. Stokes’s examination of various aspects of illegibility. Focusing on loss and recovery, Stokes introduces innovative software for recovering the lower writing of palimpsest manuscripts. Restitution of erased writing, however, incidentally opens up a whole new range of possible textual manipulations of the kind that overzealous medieval correctors might have indulged in. Echoing a warning found in a ninthcentury Sankt Gallen manuscript, “Don’t go mad with pen and pumice lest something worse get you,”18 Stokes cautions against similar excesses on the part of practitioners of digital recovery techniques, for they have at their fingertips the tools to replace any part of a text by entering new letters or words directly onto the digitized manuscript page. Is this the dawning of the age of the “cyber-palimpsest”? If this combination of Greek roots is an affront to the eye and ear, the practice it represents is likewise to scholarship. Stokes stresses, therefore, that clear rules must be established and followed in documenting the recovery of texts with purpose- designed software to ensure the integrity and reproducibility of results.

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Adrian Papahagi’s essay is a prime example of how the trial-anderror approach that characterizes some aspects of palimpsest recovery coheres with scholarly transparence. His findings and the methods used to obtain them form a running dialogue with existing scholarship, testing the limits of what is known about exchanges between English and Continental scriptoria in the age of monastic reform, and at times challenging it with hard evidence. In setting up the context for his observations, Papahagi summarizes the kinds of text that were candidates for erasure: obsolete books, poor copies, the classics, heretical writings, and texts in languages no longer understood. At this juncture, the example of the Blickling Homilies springs to mind. It is fortunate that not all texts that had outlived their usefulness or comprehensibility were erased and reused, or else the Blickling Homilies would have been lost (if not forever, then at least pending their recovery by computer- savvy paleographers). Luckily, the manuscript escaped palimpsesting and reuse in bindings into an age when the abundance of paper made such recycling unnecessary. In the early eighteenth century the manuscript was simply given away, a worthless artifact “writ in ancient character and of no further use.”19 Papahagi notes that contrary to popular belief, palimpsesting occurred most often during times of intellectual growth in religious communities. The last candle was not, in fact, on the point of f lickering out in the growing gloom of the Dark Ages as emaciated, benighted scribes feverishly scraped away the scorned texts of antiquity. By way of response to the rhetorical questions posed above regarding fears of erasure, Bede offers an example. He practically invites rewriting when, in verses attached to his commentary on the Apocalypse, he playfully suggests that the reader take a pumice to his words, represented as literary morsels, if they are found to be displeasing.20 His implication that differences in taste can motivate erasure underscores the liveliness of literate communities that did, on occasion, resort to palimpsesting to make way for new copies or new works. Erasure, like other kinds of interventions on the manuscript page, is often representative of vitality rather than a sign of an impoverished literary imagination. This view is borne out in the contribution by Paul E. Szarmach. He investigates physical traces of reconfiguration of manuscript texts and provides evidence of the editorial process at work in the rewriting of Old English homilies. When such homilists as Ælfric or Wulfstan don their reviser’s hats, they are setting out to erase and reinscribe their own texts as well as those of others. In cases like these, the permanent state of potential transformation comes to emphasize genesis over fact; homiletic composition is a process rather than an event, as Szarmach puts it. He thereby adjusts reception theory’s usual viewpoint and terminology to

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take the work of authors as editors into account, such that the chain of end products (“events”) is reabsorbed into the editorial landscape. We become observers of works in progress, rather than readers of successive versions. There is ample and original ref lection on what this process can yield as Szarmach ponders the use of the term “palimpsest” and its various meanings in relation to artistic, scribal, editorial, and authorial practices. Jane Roberts explores textual accumulations in the form of linguistic strata, as texts in different idioms existing together on the same manuscript page. Glossators counted on the continued visibility of the “underwriting” to support their own inscriptions as they planned their writing to bring out facets of the original text. In this sense, glosses are literary palimpsests, but, like material palimpsests, they share their writing surface with the original text. The title of Roberts’s essay is a nod to Fred C. Robinson’s famous plea to study manuscripts in their most immediate material contexts; indeed, page layout is essential to her understanding of how the scribes of psalters from the Anglo- Saxon period viewed the task of glossing in the vernacular. Their interlinear writing can be seen as conforming to, or departing from, expectations latent in page design. We see Old English contorting to fit between the lines of the Latin original, placing itself in fairly consistent word-to-word parallels with its source. At the same time, its lexis is stretched to ref lect the Latin. Here, then, is a textual variety of the interlinguistic gymnastics whose loss André Crépin deplores.21 Yet the point Roberts is making is much less about the subservience of the Old English to the Latin on the page than about how Anglo-Saxon scribes seized the opportunity of interlinear glossing to reinscribe the biblical text in various ways, sometimes resorting to and adapting earlier glosses to the purpose at hand. Such Old English reworkings do not, as a whole, fall neatly into umbrella categories of instructional aids, running translations, and so forth; rather, they bear witness to the creative solutions sought and found by Anglo- Saxon glossators in response to particular contexts of reading. The diversity of vernacular glosses is a reminder that “writers of Old English have left us no extended accounts of appropriate styles for writing in the vernacular.” 22 It might be said, however, that Alfred of Wessex laid the premises for a “poetics of reinscription.” His Old English version of Augustine’s Soliloquies describes the intellectual process of building a new literary “house” with spolia from the writings of predecessors. In a lecture from 2003, Malcolm Godden revisited the traditional interpretation of Alfred’s words to demonstrate the striking confidence they bespeak. 23 Alfred is not talking about mere accumulation or borrowing. Prefiguring Bernard of Chartres’s “dwarfs” perched

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on the shoulders of their larger-than-life predecessors, 24 Alfred and his circle of scholars attested that the ability to invent and adapt was alive and well among writers of Old English, as was the intellectual aptitude to assume literary activity on their own terms. Sharon M. Rowley observes, moreover, that Anglo- Saxons had been pondering the process of rewriting and what it meant at least as early as Bede’s day. In contradiction to the view of erasure as a kind of oblivion or literary death, Rowley posits it as a basis for creation. She suggests that by reading history as a palimpsest, we can recast the dynamics of confrontation and intrusion as reinscription rather than betrayal. Her analysis of the Old English adaptation of Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica confirms the benefits of this approach in exploring how modifications to the text and use of narrative voice redefine the work with respect to the original in terms of historical vision. Florence Bourgne shifts the spotlight to inscription surfaces in her study of engravings, pictorial treatment of writing, and literary references to textual production. A portion of her study is devoted to that “author’s companion,” the wax tablet, the most common palimpsest medium on which texts were composed, rubbed out, and written over. The physical act of inscribing in wax made an indelible impression on the imagination of medieval scribes handling ink and parchment. One could cite, by way of illustration, the remarkable case of two eighth- century scribes who added/replaced a word in their respective copies in such a way as to evoke a constellation of associations indicating that the image of making grooves in wax writing tablets was, to their minds, an integral part of the interpretation of a passage about the divine record of a dying man’s life.25 Later, wax tablets became the topic of poems by Baudri of Bourgueil, who traveled to Norman England and back to France in the company, no doubt, of his prized six-tablet wax “notepad.” In an interesting ref lection of the tension between permanence and transience that underlies Bourgne’s essay, Baudri writes of his everlasting friendship for his tablets, but at the same time points to his own mortality, which the tablets are supposed to share.26 Wax tablets, however, sometimes did enjoy a second life, as Bourgne notes; finely tooled specimens from antiquity reappeared in the Middle Ages as covers of precious books. This reincarnation of writing surfaces has its counterpart in the rebirth of texts in new works. While all of the essays in the first part of this volume acknowledge the material surface on which the text is permanently or impermanently inscribed, the focus of the second part is on rewriting and the “simultaneous relationship of intimacy and separation”27 that a work, as a literary palimpsest, can be shown to maintain with its predecessor(s) and successor(s). These studies address literary activity

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in terms of textual impermanence and intertextual accumulation. It has been said that Old English literature is a palimpsest, and few periods in the history of English literature offer the literary historian a greater challenge—to comprehend and appreciate the layers as they accumulated over many centuries, understanding its historical context and yet using modern critical techniques.28

Leo Carruthers rises to just such a challenge; his essay on the relationship between the historical elements in Beowulf and the poem’s genre takes a significant step toward understanding “the poem’s changing reception in critical discourse.”29 As such, it illustrates the work of rereading as much as that of rewriting. Looking back over the road the poem has traveled to the present day, parallel tracks appear: the historical track, fairly straight, if not perfectly regular; the other, a series of skid marks over a succession of genres. André Crépin has noted that Beowulf contains instructions, so to speak, for its own retelling/reinscription in its internal references to verse- craft and especially in its intertextual recycling of historical and story matter.30 In one theorist’s view, It is exactly in the intertext, which we can now see as akin to the palimpsest, that historically conditioned tensions come to the fore: tensions not only between calendar time and intraliterary time, but also between the author’s intention and the relative autonomy of a text, or between the old and the new in general.31

Carruthers argues that a similar dynamics of palimpsestuous intertextuality informs modern historical fiction genres, and beckons for Beowulf to be read in those terms, as epic romance. Carruthers’s essay is a fascinating counterpoint to the study by Claire Vial, who concentrates on the appropriation of generic markers in Middle English treatments of Breton lays. Claims of filiation, particularly unsubstantiated ones, raise awareness that a work’s finiteness or completeness is a relative concept. Open-endedness applies to both ends of a tradition, to ancestry and descent alike. It is here that the essays by Vial and Carruthers implicitly engage a Derridean analysis of genres. The works they discuss challenge their generic categories because as soon as they are labeled in one way, they display features that prevent such a classification from being satisfactory. Works do not belong to a genre; they are assigned to genres by their readers or audiences in dialogue with a set of expectations and inf luences. The question, therefore, is one of

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identification rather than of actual identity.32 Referring as it does to a normative “invisible center,” the notion of genre “also has a controlling inf luence and is binding on that which draws the genre into engendering, generations, genealogy, and degenerescence.”33 To ref lect on Breton lay, or, more broadly, the matière de Bretagne, is to ref lect on an “engendering” literary tradition. The reinscriptions of Marie de France’s Lanval, to consider only one of the palimpsested works discussed by Vial, show how the theoretical conventions of courtly romance, already f lawed but certainly present in the earliest version, are still applied in Landevale. In Thomas Chestre’s Launfal, however, those characteristics have been transformed almost beyond recognition.34 In her analysis of the seventeenth- century Sir Lambewell, Colette Stévanovitch draws attention to the parallel between scribal and authorial interventions in the text and in the work, respectively. Both involve erasure, whether in the literal or figurative sense, as well as a potential for rewriting. Stévanovitch demonstrates that the work presents a narrative rather different from the earlier Middle English reinscriptions of Marie de France’s Lanval. The early modern adaptation shows significant changes to plot and meaning, as if propagating the liberties taken by the Middle English adapters. Moreover, its language offers an intriguing mixture of outdated and misunderstood terms alongside simple errors and modernizations. These linguistic and narrative differences separating the early modern Sir Lambewell from its medieval vernacular predecessors can be set in counterpoint to early modern Latin reinscriptions of medieval Latin works. In many cases, Neo-Latin authors set out to improve on their predecessors’ purportedly barbarous style, smoothing their prose “with the Classical pumice.”35 While the early modern Latinist cast back to classical antiquity to inspire the language of his or her reinscription, the author of the English Sir Lambewell attempted to bring the narrative and its language forward in time. After all, what early modern English adapter of a Middle English text would have turned to Old English in search of purer style and more authentic idiom (especially in this case, where Anglo-Norman was the prototype)?36 These multiple layers of linguistic and diegetic reinscription bear out the observation that Middle English literature, too, is a “palimpsest”;37 so much the more so of the seventeenth-century Sir Lambewell that overwrote its medieval predecessors. The question of approaches to reinscription is complicated further still when sources exist both in Latin and in a vernacular different from the one in which the new work is composed. However much Chaucer may have complained that a copyist might “myswrite” and “mysmetre” his verses, he transformed his own sources as well. The contribution by Gila

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Aloni investigates how Chaucer composed his “Legend of Philomela” to infuse it with significations not found in the legend by Ovid or in the Ovide Moralisé. Parts of the Latin legend are figuratively erased to form a Middle English text with an entirely different moral. 38 Aloni also examines the ways in which “palimpsestic Philomela” meshes with Chaucer’s reinscriptions of other works within his posthumously titled Legend of Good Women. In this way, “the value of reading the texts in association” that is crucial to the study of the manuscript codex as a “composite artifact”39 is applied here to analysis of the edited form of legends grouped together in a collection designed by the author.40 The reappropriations and palimpsestuous transformations analyzed by Aloni, Vial, and Stévanovitch can be understood in terms akin to those used to describe the activity of the early writers of Old English prose: One might argue that writers were engaged in a consciously imaginative or fictionalizing activity, creating works which had their own dramatic autonomy; that they were not seriously (or fraudulently) claiming to represent their progenitors but appropriating them to create a body of literature which explored ideas in an imagined setting which owed something to those progenitors and certainly acknowledged them but partly fictionalized them.41

If this quotation from Godden’s study of Alfredian misappropriations of the past is germane to a discussion of Middle English literary palimpsests, it is, of course, because there is no rigid boundary between the periods. Admittedly it is otiose to belabor the point. Nevertheless, in a volume on how the practice and memory of palimpsesting operated in the literary imagination of medieval England, it may not be so very superf luous to underscore continuities where they exist despite differences in language and historical settings. As regards continuity, it goes without saying that the memory of medieval England lives on in the literary imagination. The last essay in this volume analyzes the transposition of Arthurian legend and the aesthetics of medieval romance onto film. More than an illustration of the palimpsestic Arthurian tradition, John Boorman’s film Excalibur reveals its aesthetic underwriting. Jean-Marc Elsholz argues that Excalibur, ostensibly an adaptation of Malory’s Le Morte Darthur, actually renews a specific medieval aesthetics on the silver screen (a metonymy for cinema that, it may be argued, has particular relevance to the visual representation of legends of Arthur). Film is a medium on which aesthetics, defined by Elsholz as the human construction of the world through vision, can be enacted and literally brought to light from below the overwriting of the textual Arthurian tradition. Thus, a parallel may be drawn between

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cinema and the technologies discussed by Peter A. Stokes at the beginning of the volume, where the aim is to uncover and elucidate the original by means of manipulations of light and color. The science of cinema and its ability to represent aesthetics recalls the peculiar combination of science and spirituality that allowed Thomas De Quincey to write of “our own heaven- created palimpsest, the deep memorial palimpsest of the brain,” on which “everlasting layers of ideas, images, feelings” have fallen “softly as light.”42 The very notion that intellectual, visual, and emotional memories are committed to the mind as if by light augurs Elsholz’s suggestion that perceptions of the universe were inextricably linked not to the ability to see, but rather to the human capacity for (en)vision(ing). Of this, the Grail quest depicted in Boorman’s film is a most poignant demonstration. With these reminders of the quest inherent in the investigation of metaphorical and literal palimpsests alike, I close the introduction to the present volume on palimpsests and the literary imagination in and of medieval England. Borrowing the words of Umberto Eco, I could claim to “demonstrate that it is impossible to write without palimpsesting . . . without ever succeeding in eluding the anxiety of inf luence.”43 One of the inf luences most strongly felt within these pages is that of André Crépin. Unanxiously do we, his friends, fellow scholars, and former students, acknowledge it. Our “palimpsest” of his work involves no erasure; rather, it endeavors to build on his original writing to add another layer to our heritage of medieval English scholarship. This book is a tribute to André Crépin, angliciste médiéviste par excellence. Notes 1. Claus Uhlig, “Literature as Textual Palingenesis: On Some Principles of Literary History,” New Literary History 16.3 (Spring 1985): 496 [481–513], referring to Plutarch. 2. Willie van Peer, “Mutilated Signs: Notes Toward a Literary Palæography,” Poetics Today 18.1 (Spring 1997): 34 and 47 [33–57]. 3. Roger Chartier, Inscrire et effacer: culture écrite et littérature (XIe–XVIIIe siècle) (Paris: Seuil/Gallimard, 2005), p. 10; his definitions are inspired by David Scott Kastan, Shakespeare and the Book (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 117–8. The English version of Chartier’s book is Inscription and Erasure: Literature and Written Culture from the Eleventh to the Eighteenth Century, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007). 4. Tiphaine Samoyault, L’intertextualité: mémoire de la littérature (2001; Paris: Armand Colin, 2008). See also the discussion of palimspest and

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5.

6.

7.

8.

9. 10.

11.

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weaving metaphors as images of intertextuality by Carmen Lara-Rallo, “Pictures Worth a Thousand Words: Metaphorical Images of Textual Interdependence,” Nordic Journal of English Studies 8.2 (2009): 91–110. Gérard Genette, Palimpsests, trans. Channa Newman and Claude Doubinsky (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997), pp. 398–99. The French original is Palimpsestes: la littérature au second degré (Paris: Seuil, 1982). See also Sarah Dillon, The Palimpsest: Literature, Criticism, Theory (London: Continuum, 2007), pp. 4–5 and 254. In Palimpsests, Genette discusses mainly the “hypertext” resulting from a process of transformation of another text or derivation from it. He reserves “intertextuality” for the practice of citation, allusion, and plagiarism. The present volume is not as restrictive in its definition of literary palimpsests, and encompasses a variety of what Genette terms “transtextual relationships.” Joyce Hill, “The Preservation and Transmission of Aelfric’s Saints’ Lives: Reader-Reception and Reader-Response in the Early Middle Ages,” in Paul E. Szarmach and Joel T. Rosenthal, eds., The Preservation and Transmission of Anglo-Saxon Culture, Studies in Medieval Culture XL (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 1997), pp. 406 and 423 [405–30] citing Robert C. Holub, Reception Theory: A Critical Introduction (London: Methuen 1984), p. 149. William P. Stoneman, “ ‘Writ in Ancient Character and of No Further Use’: Anglo- Saxon Manuscripts in American Collections,” in Szarmach and Rosenthal, eds., Preservation and Transmission, p. 108 [99–138]. In a related vein, Thomas De Quincey, in Suspiria de Profundis [1845], assesses the status palimpsests have acquired in terms of an inversion of value between the literary work (“jewel” or “freight”) and the vellum (“setting of the jewel” or “vehicle”). See his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and Suspiria de Profundis (Boston, 1866), pp. 227–8. Thomas D. Hill, “Introduction,” in Sources of Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture, Vol. 1, ed. Frederick M. Biggs, Thomas D. Hill, Paul E. Szarmach, and E. Gordon Whatley (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 2001), p. xxi [xv–xxxiii]. Leslie Brubaker, “Palimpsest,” in Dictionary of the Middle Ages, vol. 9 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1987), p. 355. Eric Jager, The Book of the Heart (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), p. 172, citing intellectual historian and social critic Ivan Illich, In the Vineyard of the Text: A Commentary to Hugh’s Didascalicon (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), p. 3. In fact, the screen in question is the computer monitor in our age of information technology; here I use it to represent cinema, a topic Jager discusses on the same page. In fact, the term “recycling” has recently been used in precisely this context. See Geert Claassens and Werner Verbeke, eds., Medieval Manuscripts in Transition: Tradition and Creative Recycling (Leuven University Press, 2006). This fine volume contains essays on an array of Western manuscripts, but none from England.

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12. See André Crépin, “Bede and the Vernacular,” in Famulus Christi: Essays in Commemoration of the Thirteenth Centenary of the Birth of the Venerable Bede, ed. Gerald Bonner (London: SPCK, 1976), pp. 172–3 and 187–9 n. 6 [170–92]; also Dom Jean Leclercq, L’amour des lettres et le désir de Dieu: initiation aux auteurs monastiques du Moyen Age, 3rd ed. (1957; Paris: Cerf, 1990), p. 72, on ruminatio as a method of lectio divina. I apply the analogy to scriptio. The English version of Leclercq’s classic is The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture, trans. Catharine Misrahi (London: SPCK, 1978; New York: Fordham University Press, 1982). 13. Chartier, Inscrire et effacer, p. 7. 14. Bernhard Bischoff, Latin Palaeography: Antiquity and the Middle Ages, trans. Dáibhí Ó Cróinín and David Ganz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 18–19. 15. Laura Kendrick, Animating the Letter: The Figurative Embodiment of Writing from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1999), p. 177, in her discussion of loci of authority over the text’s sense. 16. Quoted by Richard Gameson, The Scribe Speaks? Colophons in Early English Manuscripts, H.M. Chadwick Memorial Lectures 12 (Cambridge: University of Cambridge, ASNC, 2001), p. 20. 17. A summary of this miracle is given by Bertram Colgrave, “The PostBedan Miracles and Translations of St Cuthbert,” in The Early Cultures of North-West Europe, ed. Sir Cyril Fox and Bruce Dickins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950), p. 322 [307–322]. 18. Gameson, The Scribe Speaks?, p. 2. The manuscript is Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, 261 (pt. III), 276. 19. Stoneman, “Writ in Ancient Character,” pp. 99–100. Even as late as the twentieth century, an agent who bought it was scolded for acquiring an item that would, it was thought, be almost impossible to auction off. 20. Bede, Bedae Presbyteri Expositio Apocalypseos, ed. Roger Gryson, CCSL 121A (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001), p. 219. “Nostra tuis ergo sapiant si fercula labris / Regnanti laudes da super astra deo. / Sin alias, animos tamen amplexatus amicos, / Quae cano corripiens pumice frange, fero.” (ll. 19–22). [If these my scanty morsels please thy taste, / Give praise to God, Who reigns above the skies; / Or else, accept a friendly heart’s intent, / And, armed with pumice, this my verse erase.] Bede, The Explanation of the Apocalypse, trans. Edward Marshall (Oxford, 1878), online at The ORB: On-line Reference Book for Medieval Studies, http:// home.mchsi.com/~numenor/medstud/apocalypse/epigram.htm. 21. Regretting that specialization and the requirements of the job market ultimately steered him away from the study of the classics, Crépin defends their value “as an initiation to various modes of thought and feeling, as linguistic gymnastics, and as a common denominator of European cultures.” André Crépin, “Brute Beauty and Valour and Act . . . ,” in Medieval English Language Scholarship: Autobiographies by Representative Scholars in Our

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22.

23.

24.

25.

26.

27. 28.

29.

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Discipline, ed. Akio Oizumi and Tadao Kubouchi (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 2005), p. 20 [18–27]. Jonathan Wilcox, “Variant Texts of an Old English Homily: Vercelli X and Stylistic Readers,” in Szarmach and Rosenthal, eds., Preservation and Transmission, p. 346 [335–51]. On the absence of recommendations on vernacular usage in metrical treatises, see André Crépin, “Poétique latine et poétique vieil-anglaise: poèmes mêlant les deux langues,” Médiévales 25 (Autumn 1993): 36–38 [33–44]. Malcolm Godden, The Translations of Alfred and His Circle, and the Misappropriation of the Past, H.M. Chadwick Memorial Lectures 14 (Cambridge: University of Cambridge, ASNC, 2003), pp. 16–28. In the famous “dwarfs on the shoulders of giants” analogy reported by John of Salisbury, The Metalogicon of John of Salisbury, A Twelfth- Century Defense of the Verbal and Logical Arts of the Trivium, trans. Daniel D. McGarry (1955; repr. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982), 3.4, p. 167. The reference is to the unfortunate Mercian’s otherworldly “life-ledger” in Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica (5.13). An addition/replacement of the word uomeres (“ploughshares,” “pointed objects,” and, by extension, “dagger” and “stylus”) in two early manuscripts, as well as modifications around the word in a number of copies, raises a triple image (stabbing with daggers/ inscribing letters/ploughing furrows) in resonance with various texts well known to the monastic penman. See Sharon M. Rowley, Reading Miracles in Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum (PhD dissertation, University of Chicago, 1996), pp. 140–41; see also Rowley’s essay, “The Role and Function of Otherworldly Visions in Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica gentis anglorum,” in The World of Travellers: Exploration and Imagination, Mediaevalia Groningana n.s. 15, ed. Kees Dekker, Karen E. Olsen, and T. Hofstra (Louvain: Peeters, 2009), pp. 163–82. Chartier, Inscrire et effacer, p. 19, citing Baldricus Burgulianus/Baudri de Bourgueil, Poèmes, vol. 1, ed. Jean-Yves Tilliette (Paris: Belles-Lettres, 1999), p. 37: Sed uester mecum ludus perduret in aeuum, / A tabulis nunquam scilicet amouear. / Viuam uobiscum; uos autem uiuite mecum, / Tandem nos unus suscipiat tumulus. [May the games we share endure forever / let me never be separated from my tablets. / I will live on with you; you, then, live together with me, / May a single tomb receive us both.] Dillon, The Palimpsest, p. 3. Stanley B. Greenfield with Daniel Gillmore Calder and Michael Lapidge, A New Critical History of Old English Literature (New York: New York University Press, 1986), pp. 3–4. This is how Jane Roberts describes her own rather different approach to “Vainglory” in her essay, “A Man ‘boca gleaw’ and His Musings,” in Virginia Blanton and Helene Scheck, eds., Intertexts: Studies in AngloSaxon Culture Presented to Paul E. Szarmach (Tempe: ACMRS and Brepols, 2008), p. 136 [119–37].

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30. André Crépin, Old English Poetics: A Technical Handbook (Paris: AMAES, 2005), pp. 156–9, 165, and 48–9. 31. Uhlig, “Literature as Textual Palingenesis,” 502. 32. Frédérique Toudoire- Surlapierre, “Derrida, Blanchot, ‘Peut- être l’extase,’ ” in Fabula: littérature, histoire, théorie 1 (February 1, 2006), http://www.fabula.org/lht/1/Toudoire- Surlapierre.html, ¶3 and ¶5; also Jacques Derrida; trans. Avital Ronell, “The Law of Genre,” Critical Inquiry 7 (Autumn 1980): 59 and 64–65 [55–81]. See also Stephen G. Nichols, “Working Late: Marie de France and the Value of Poetry,” in Women in French Literature, ed. Michel Guggenheim, Stanford French and Italian Studies 58 (Saratoga, CA: ANMA Libri, 1988), p. 12 [7–16]. 33. Derrida, “The Law of Genre,” 74. 34. Peter Noble, “Lanval, Sir Landevale et Sir Launfal: texte, traduction et adaptation,” in D’une écriture à l’autre. Les femmes et la traduction sous l’Ancien Régime, ed. Jean-Philippe Beaulieu (Ottawa: Presses de l’Université d’Ottawa, 2004), pp. 75 and 78 [73–80]. 35. Ælfric’s Life of Saint Basil the Great: Background and Context, ed. Gabriella Corona (Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 2006), p. 147. Corona provides interesting examples of hypercorrection and careful elimination of nonClassical style in Laurentius Surius’s sixteenth- century rewriting of a Latin source of the life of St. Basil, pp. 142–48. 36. Cf. the “Saxon root” consciousness of nineteenth- century philologist and poet William Barnes, and of course J.R.R. Tolkien, among others, in the twentieth century. 37. Christopher Baswell, “Multilingualism on the Page,” in Middle English, ed. Paul Strohm (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 46 [38–50], referring to the interplay of literary languages on the manuscript page in Kyng Alisaunder and the Holkham Bible Picture Book. 38. See Rita Copeland’s discussion of the status of the Legend of Good Women as a “secondary” form of vernacularization in her Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation in the Middle Ages: Academic Traditions and Vernacular Texts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 94–96. “While [secondary translations] may acknowledge a source (as in the case of Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women . . . ) and hence their own status of translations, they exploit the logic of exegetical supplementation to recontextualize their sources and so to efface them,” p. 95 (also pp. 107–126 on the Ovide Moralisé as “primary translation”). 39. Fred C. Robinson, “Old English Literature in Its Most Immediate Context,” in Old English Literature in Context, ed. John D. Niles (Ipswich: D.S. Brewer, 1980), p. 28 [11–29]. As is well known, Robinson pleads in favor of taking full account of how/where a manuscript text was placed on the page and within a codex; here, however, his argument is fruitfully applied to consideration of a work within an authorially designed collection, whether in manuscript or edited form.

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40. Reading a corpus of generically related texts in association enabled Florence Bourgne, in her “Le statut générique de la Légende des femmes vertueuses de Chaucer—ou la couleur des pâquerettes,” Bulletin des Anglicistes Médiévistes 54 (Winter 1998): 47–50 [37–50], to envision the “Legend of Good Women” as a pastiche of a compendium of saints’ lives. 41. I have “erased” some parts of this passage, which is taken from Godden, The Translations of Alfred, p. 27. 42. De Quincey, Suspiria de Profundis, p. 233. Uhlig, “Literature as Textual Palingenesis,” 497, continues the passage from De Quincey to emphasize the “presentness of the past” in the coexistence of strata in a literary work. 43. Umberto Eco, The Island of the Day Before, trans. William Weaver (New York: Harcourt, 1994), pp. 513–14 (translation slightly modified), referring undoubtedly to Harold Bloom’s The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973). Most of the works studied in the present volume fall within what Bloom called the preShakespearean “giant age . . . before the anxiety of inf luence became central to poetic consciousness” (pp. 11–12). Medievalists might feel impelled to challenge or refine his assessment.

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PART I PERMANENCE AND IMPERMANENCE OF WRITING ON THE PAGE

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CHAPTER 1 AN ANGLO-SAXON PALIMPSEST FROM FLEURY: ORLÉANS, BIBLIOTHÈQUE MUNICIPALE MS 342 (290) Adrian Papahagi

This essay examines an Orléans manuscript (s. x/xi) against the background of exchanges between Fleury and Anglo-Saxon abbeys, and suggests it was palimpsested in Fleury.

A

mong the many items of prêt-à-penser that the medievalist must constantly fight, one in particular has the endurance of an archetype. This diehard prejudice is, alas, linked to the very name of the Middle Ages. Thus we are all obliged, at one stage or another, to patiently explain that the Middle Ages were not a thousand years of darkness between the golden age of Rome and the splendor of Florence; that the Renaissance was not that much of a virgin birth, since its seeds had been sown centuries before; that the humanists’ antiqua was in fact an imitation of Caroline minuscule; that without the libraries and scriptoria of the Middle Ages there would have been little for the Renaissance to resuscitate. And yet, palimpsests represent precisely one of those controversial practices of medieval civilization that can justify some animosity between classicists and medievalists. For, as L.D. Reynolds and N.G. Wilson wrote, “[M]any texts that had escaped destruction in the crumbling empire of the West perished within the walls of the monastery . . . .”1 However, it is probably preferable to understand the phenomenon in the manner of Rosamond McKitterick, who points out quite subtly that “the most striking feature of palimpsests for the historian is the paradox that they represent evidence preserved by destruction.”2 It is to the (rather

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exiguous) evidence preserved in such a manuscript that I would like to turn here. Although in the case of Orléans, Bibliothèque Municipale MS 342 (290) almost nothing has survived from the erased text, the Fleury codex under scrutiny can be used as a pretext to address a few general issues concerning early medieval palimpsests. If the lower script of this palimpsest can be shown to be Anglo- Saxon, the manuscript is one further witness to the intense relationships between Anglo-Saxon England and France in the tenth century. Those times are gone when scholars attributed the erasure of Cicero codices to the hatred of Gregory the Great or of Columbanus for the Latin classics.3 If it is true that an important number of Arian texts were palimpsested because of their unorthodox nature,4 in most cases the reasons for rewriting codices were not religious or ideological, but merely practical. Early medieval abbeys like Bobbio, the most prolific center of palimpsest production,5 were in the paradoxical situation of possessing important quantities of late antique and early medieval libri inutiles,6 and of lacking the material to produce all the new books they needed. The reason for erasing old books was thus not a war against the texts they contained, but the irrelevance of those texts for early medieval monks. As noted by Lowe in his article on codices rescripti, manuscripts were palimpsested because they were obsolescent, because they were in unknown languages, because they were difficult or impossible to read (e.g., texts written in scriptio continua), or simply because they contained bad or incomplete texts (codices mutili).7 During the period studied by Lowe in his invaluable “Codices rescripti” (up to c.800, but sometimes including manuscripts copied s. viii/ix), most palimpsests were made in the seventh and eighth centuries, and a sharp decline in this practice can be noticed in the ninth century.8 Unsurprisingly, two-thirds of the almost 150 palimpsests listed by Lowe were produced in Italy, and forty-seven were rewritten in Bobbio alone! In the rest of Merovingian and Carolingian Europe, this practice is not widespread: liturgical palimpsests can be found in centers like Fulda, Sankt Gallen, and Benediktbeuern, and there is a modest number of palimpsests of French provenance, especially from Luxeuil, Corbie, and Fleury. England, with only four manuscripts listed by Lowe, seems to be practically unaffected, but this is probably due to the more limited availability of old continental manuscripts in the insular realm. If one turns to the types of texts that were overwritten, one discovers that they included biblical, liturgical, and even patristic texts (the latter, however, appearing more often as the scriptio superior). Still, in most cases the erased texts are the works of the classics, such as the famous De re publica by Cicero (Vatican, Vat. Lat. MS 5757),9 texts in languages other than

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Latin (mainly Greek and Gothic10), heretical texts,11 pre-Vulgate biblical texts,12 but also bad texts of the Vulgate and obsolete liturgical books.13 Outside Italy, the abbey of Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire (Fleury) is one of the important producers of palimpsests. Fleury was founded in the seventh century, but it became one of the most prominent French abbeys at the beginning of the eighth century, when its monks succeeded—in a rather unorthodox way—in translating the relics of St. Benedict from Monte Cassino.14 Italian books copied in the fifth to seventh centuries may have been brought to Fleury on that occasion, and others may have been received later in the eighth century, as a result of “papal munificence.”15 In any case, it is certain that the Library of Orléans, which inherited the main bulk of Fleury manuscripts, is second only to Paris where the number of codices latini antiquiores preserved in French libraries is concerned.16 With its thirty-one surviving manuscripts copied up to the eighth century,17 and three to five palimpsests, Fleury appears to have had one of the earliest and richest libraries in Merovingian and Carolingian France. Apart from books imported from Italy, Fleury also had a famous scriptorium, whose origins may go back to the middle of the eighth century.18 The library, scriptorium, and school of Fleury enjoyed two moments of glory in the period under consideration. Their first blossoming began some time in the eighth century, and probably as early as the translation of St. Benedict’s relics after 703, and it grew ripe under the rule of Theodulf of Orléans († 821).19 This period of fervent scriptorial activity was brought to a halt by the repeated raids of the Normans in 865–897, and it may be assumed that book production at Fleury dwindled to a minimum or even ceased at this time.20 The abbey’s second period of glory started after it was reformed by Cluny around 930, and lasted for a full century. It can be said that under the rules of Abbo (988–1004) and Gauzlin (1004–1030), Fleury had already reached its zenith.21 During its second great century, Fleury acted as a reformer of other French abbeys, and exerted an important and widely acknowledged inf luence on a series of English monastic and ecclesiastical centers. Since the exchanges between Fleury and Anglo- Saxon England in the tenth century have been well studied, a brief sketch of these connections is sufficient for our purposes.22 Anglo-Saxons started visiting Fleury soon after its Cluniac reform in the 930s: in that decade, Oda, future archbishop of Canterbury, was tonsured at Fleury. In 959, Oswald, Oda’s nephew, and future bishop of Worcester (961) and York (971), studied in Fleury; back in England, he founded Ramsey and became its first abbot. Other English novices and monks are attested in Fleury in the 950s and in the 960s, including Germanus, the future abbot of Winchcombe, and Osgar, Æthelwold’s pupil and successor in 963 as abbot of Abingdon. The

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exchanges went both ways, however, for a group of Fleury monks is also known to have visited England in the same period. The intensity of these exchanges gained momentum in the last decades of the century, when a mission was sent from Ramsey to persuade Abbo to move to England. Abbo followed them, and was active in England for a couple of years (985–87).23 Fleury’s most decisive inf luence on Anglo-Saxon England was its impact on the Regularis concordia, but also its contribution to the advancement of insular scholarship. England paid homage to Fleury by sending over precious books, such as the Winchester Benedictional (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale lat. MS 987) offered by Ramsey to Gauzlin,24 the Winchcombe Sacramentary (Orléans, Bibliothèque Municipale MS 127 (105)),25 and the beautiful Boethius manuscript now in Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale lat. MS 6401.26 Indeed, the exchanges of books and the circulation of scribes and illuminators between English centers and Fleury were so multifarious that it is not uncommon to find drawings by English masters in books copied at Fleury by local monks, as is the case of Orléans, Bibliothèque Municipale MS 175 (152).27 English scribes are also known to have been active at Fleury in the tenth century: a certain Leofnoth was discovered by Jean Vezin 28 and, even more interesting, the Old English “Leiden riddle” (Leiden, Voss MS Q 106) is thought by Malcolm Parkes to have been copied at Saint-Benoît.29 This context of fertile exchanges between England and Fleury is the background against which may have been made our manuscript, Orléans, Bibliothèque Municipale MS 342 (290), hereafter referred to as O. O is the most recent, least famous, and also least readable of the three palimpsests of certain Fleury provenance.30 The two others are deservedly famous manuscripts: one, now membra disiecta divided between Orléans, Bibliothèque Municipale MS 192 (169), Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Lat. MS 4° 364, and Vatican, Reg. Lat. MS 1283B, contains in lower script a fifthcentury Italian copy of Sallust’s Historiae 31; the other, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale lat. MS 6400G, fols. 112v–145v, preserves a fifth-century African version of the New Testament.32 Both manuscripts were rewritten in the seventh and eighth centuries, but it is unlikely that this should have happened at Fleury. O differs in all respects from the other two palimpsests of unquestionable Fleury provenance in that its scriptio inferior is believed by Lowe to be eighth- century Anglo-Saxon minuscule33 rather than late antique Italian; the manuscript was rewritten in the tenth or early eleventh century, and most likely at Fleury. The scriptio inferior of O appears on pages 1–68, which constitute a visibly distinct unit in the codex: between pages 68 and 69 there is an obvious change in parchment type, which has not been noted

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Orléans, Bibliothèque Municipale MS 342 (290), pp. 68–69, upper script.

Source: Photos in Figures 1.1 to 1.5 courtesy of the Médiathèque d’Orléans.

Note: The transition from insular to French parchment is visible. To the hand, the English parchment is thick and feels starched and crisp, whereas the French parchment is thin, glossy, very well scraped (there is almost no difference between f lesh- side and hair- side), and sometimes translucid. The pale hue of the French parchment stands in obvious contrast with the dark aspect of the English parchment (in this case, palimpsesting probably adds to the effect). Note also that the text continues from the palimpsested section to the new quire.

Figure 1.1

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so far—an important point, to which I shall return (Figure 1.1). The upper script transmits the Lives of St. Nicholas (pp. 1–59) and St. Alexis (pp. 59–69), 34 copied at Fleury in the late tenth or early eleventh century. The palimpsested quires (one binio and four quaterniones) were obtained by folding the seventeen original sheets into bifolia. Since the current size of these pages is now c.200 x 130 mm, the original size of the erased leaves must have been at least 260 x 200 mm, and possibly c.280 x 220 mm. The old ruling, still visible, was prepared to accommodate 26–28 long lines. 35 Unfortunately, the lower script text has been so thoroughly washed out that one can hardly read anything today. The only visible traces are in the margins of pages, especially the lower ones, which also display some more easily recognizable large initials (e.g., “N,” Figure 1.2). Before seeing the manuscript myself, I asked the technical department of the Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes (IRHT) in Orléans for a new set of photographs, for techniques have evolved significantly since the palimpsest was last studied by Lowe. Although the IRHT promptly responded to my request, their photographs did not use any special light exposure (ultraviolet, infrared, transparency). 36 Nonetheless, I was offered excellent high-resolution digital pictures, which I edited in

Figure 1.2 Orléans, BM MS 342 (290), p. 35, lower script. Note: Normal high-resolution photograph of the lower margin of the page, showing a large N-initial (rotated).

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various ways in an attempt to better read the scriptio inferior. Although I employed as best I was able the techniques mentioned in contemporary research,37 the resulting images did not dramatically improve the visibility of the lower script. Since the manuscripts reading room of the Library of Orléans does not possess an ultraviolet lamp, all I could rely on during my visit to Orléans was my reasonably good sight and the poor natural light of a very rainy day.38 Combined, they yielded less than the digital photographs of the IRHT. After the present paper was completed, Dr. Peter Stokes kindly offered to process a few images himself, using the software and the techniques that he presents in his contribution to the present volume.39 Although Dr. Stokes’s results are better than mine (Figures 1.3–1.4), one is still far from reading enough text to make its identification possible. It is our purpose,

Figure 1.3 Orléans, BM MS 342 (290), p. 34.

Figure 1.4

The same image enhanced by Dr. Peter A. Stokes.

Note: Normal high-resolution photograph of the lower margin of the page (rotated).

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however, to study the codex and its scriptio inferior in more detail, using the best available technology, in an attempt to crack the mystery of the erased text. What I can say, in the given circumstances, is therefore not very much. However, by examining the manuscript, I noticed a few details that had escaped Lowe. First of all, pages 1–68 actually seem to be made of insular vellum, which is thicker than continental parchment.40 Thus, one statement of Lowe, adopted with caution by Helmut Gneuss,41 can now be disproved. At the end of his entry in Codices Latini Antiquiores (CLA), Lowe writes that the manuscript was “used in the eleventh century for rewriting, apparently in England to judge by the script.” However, the fact that the text continues from the palimpsested page 68 over to page 69 (Figure 1.1), which inaugurates the French parchment section of the volume, clearly indicates that it was not copied in England, but in Fleury. Moreover, I can see no insular symptoms in the upper script of pages 1–69: there is nothing of the Anglo- Saxon mannerism or calligraphic quality in the treatment of the minims, or in the serifs of such letters as e (see Figure 1.5). As is well known, Anglo-Saxon Caroline minuscule is often indistinguishable from its continental models, and Fleury script in particular was certainly one of those models. Nevertheless, if one examines however cursorily the specimina in T.A.M. Bishop’s English Caroline Minuscule, one will note that one aspect of this script that is almost never missing is the presence of feet applied to the minims of such letters as m and n.42 Of these, there are few in O. However, even if the hand of pages 1–69 may be thought by some to display insular symptoms, this does not explain the availability of French parchment in England. It is easier to argue that an Anglo- Saxon scribe active at Fleury is responsible for copying pages 1–69 on erased English and new French parchment; indeed, the presence of such scribes at Fleury in the tenth and eleventh centuries is well documented by Vezin and Parkes.43 To conclude, I have no doubts that the quires making up pages 1–68 were erased and rewritten at Fleury, where they were used alongside new French parchment. As far as the lower script is concerned, more image processing is needed before its nature can be ascertained. Lowe’s identification of the script as Anglo- Saxon minuscule is hard to confirm, and so is his dating in the eighth century. Whether the script is indeed from the eighth century is for more experienced specialists of Anglo- Saxon minuscule to say.

Figure 1.5 Orléans, BM MS 342 (290), p. 35, upper script. Note: No insular features are visible in the treatment of the minims.

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In addition to Lowe’s entry in CLA, I would add that the erased text is in Latin, as is suggested by the few clusters that can still be made out, not without some difficulty: e.g., caelo (Figure 1.4) or the abbreviation ē (est), visible on the specimen in Lowe’s CLA. Finally, one can only attempt to guess at the contents of the erased text. Since no two or three contiguous words can be read, I attempted to compare the size of the original leaves (c.260 x 200 mm) to the sizes of surviving eighth-century manuscripts written in Anglo- Saxon England. Starting from Lowe’s CLA, I resolved to put to their best use the principles of quantitative codicology, and I recorded the sizes of different types of texts. Here are some results: Homilies (five): 215–233 x 123–170 (four); 305 x 215 (one) Glossary (one): 320 x 245 Theology (eight): 247–252 x 160–190 (three); 280–295 x 210–220 (four); 420 x 295 (one) Gospels, New Testament books (nine): 227 x 170 (one); 285–288 x 215 (two); 295–308 x 223–230 (three); 325–333 x 235–265 (two); 470 x 345 (one) Old Testament books (two): 310 x 225; 480 x 335 Liturgical books (one): 215 x 145 Cosmography (one): 280 x 190

These figures do not really provide any final answer, but they can suggest one or two things. Most manuscripts whose size is in the range of 260–280 x 200–220 mm are works of theology and gospel books. The layout of the erased leaves, with its stately initials, does not rule out the possibility that the lower script of O contained some obsolete, corrupt, or incomplete biblical or theological text. However, these are mere hypotheses, and the only conclusion that I would like to draw is that our Orléans manuscript is a book made at Fleury, partly using five Anglo- Saxon quires of some liber inutilis. The original manuscript was probably brought to Fleury in the tenth or eleventh century by an English monk, and it was erased because its text was deemed useless, rather than for dearth of parchment in this leading center of learning. Notes The present study was supported by a grant from the Romanian Research Council (CNCSIS, UEFISCSU PN II-RU-TE 290/2010). 1. L.D. Reynolds and N.G. Wilson, Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 85.

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2. Rosamond McKitterick, “Palimpsests: Concluding Remarks,” in Georges Declercq, ed. Early Medieval Palimpsests, Bibliologia 26 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), p. 145 [145–51]. 3. Against this theory, see C.H. Beeson, “The Palimpsests of Bobbio,” in Miscellanea Giovanni Mercati VI. Paleografia, bibliografia, varia, ed. A.M. Albareda (Vatican: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1973), pp. 162–4. 4. See R. Gryson, Les palimpsestes ariens latins de Bobbio. Contributions à la méthodologie de l’étude des palimpsestes (Turnhout: Brepols, 1983). 5. Cf. Beeson, “The Palimpsests of Bobbio.” 6. See G. Powitz, “Libri inutiles in mittelalterlichen Bibliotheken. Bemerkungen über Alienatio, Palimpsestierung und Makulierung,” Scriptorium 50 (1996): 288–304. 7. E.A. Lowe, “Codices Rescripti: A List of the Oldest Latin Palimpsests with Stray Observations on Their Origin,” in Palaeographical Papers, vol. 2, ed. L. Bieler (Oxford, 1972), p. 482 [480–519]. Originally published in Mélanges Eugène Tisserant V (Vatican: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1964). See also Bernhard Bischoff, Latin Palaeography: Antiquity and the Middle Ages, trans. Dáibhí Ó Cróinín and David Ganz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 11; Georges Declercq, “Introduction: Codices Rescripti in the Early Medieval West,” in Declercq, ed., Early Medieval Palimpsests, pp. 20–22 [7–22]. 8. According to Lowe, “Codices rescripti,” p. 482, supplemented by Declercq, “Introduction,” pp. 11–13, the following numbers of palimpsests were produced in the early Middle Ages: ss. v–vi: six; s. vi/vii: ten; s. vii: twentytwo; s. vii/viii: thirty-two; s. viii: sixty-three; s. viii/ix: seventeen. 9. Beeson, “The Palimpsests of Bobbio,” pp. 171–3. 10. Michiel van der Hout, “Gothic Palimpsests of Bobbio,” Scriptorium 6 (1952): 91–93; Lowe, “Codices rescripti,” pp. 517–9. 11. Of course, Gothic writings qualify for destruction both as Arian and as unintelligible vernacular texts. 12. See, for example, S. Berger, Le palimpseste de Fleury. Fragments du Nouveau Testament en latin (Paris, 1889), and above all the studies of Dold (see note 13). 13. Many of these were studied and edited by Alban Dold, Palimpsest-Studien, 2 vols., Texte und Arbeiten 45, 48 (Beuron: Beuroner Kunstverlag, 1955 and 1957). Cf. Yitzhak Hen, “Liturgical Palimpsests from the Early Middle Ages,” in Declercq, ed., Early Medieval Palimpsests, pp. 45–47. 14. On the translation of St. Benedict’s relics, recorded by Paul the Deacon (Historia Langobardorum VI.2) and Adrevald of Fleury (Historia translationis S. Benedicti, PL 124, col. 901–10), see G. Chenesseau, L’Abbaye de Fleury à Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire. Son histoire, ses institutions, ses édifices (Paris: G. Van Oest, 1931), pp. 5–9. 15. Bernhard Bischoff, Manuscripts and Libraries in the Age of Charlemagne, trans. Michael M. Gorman (Cambridge: Cambridge Univesity Press, 2007), p. 17. 16. Frère Denis, “Les anciens manuscrits de Fleury (1),” [there was never a sequel] Bulletin trimestriel de la Société archéologique et historique de l’Orléanais,

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17. 18. 19.

20.

21. 22.

23. 24.

25.

26.

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n.s. 2 (1962): 271 [266–81]. On the fate of Fleury’s books, see Frère Denis, “Les anciens manuscrits de Fleury,” 267–70, and Marco Mostert, The Library of Fleury. A Provisional List of Manuscripts (Hilversum: Verloren Publishers, 1989), pp. 29–33. Denis-Bernard Grémont and Jacques Hourlier, “La plus ancienne bibliothèque de Fleury,” Studia monastica 21 (1979): 253–64. Mostert, The Library of Fleury, p. 21. On Theodulf, see Ernst Rzehulka, Theodulf, Bischof von Orléans, Abt der Klöster St. Benoît zu Fleury und St. Aignan in Orléans, (Dissertation Breslau, 1877); Alejandra de Riquer, Teodulfo de Orleans y la epístola poética en la literatura carolingia (Barcelona: Real Academia de Buenas Letras, 1994), chap. “Estudio biográfico de Teodulfo de Orleans,” pp. 13–59. Chenesseau, L’Abbaye de Fleury, p. 85; Émile Lesne, Histoire de la propriété ecclésiastique en France. T. 4: Les livres, “scriptoria” et bibliothèques du commencement du VIIIe à la fin du XIe siècle (Lille: Facultés catholiques, 1938), pp. 549–55. Mostert, The Library of Fleury, pp. 19–27. L. Gougaud, “Les relations de l’abbaye de Fleury-sur-Loire avec la Bretagne Armoricaine et les Îles Britanniques (Xe et XIe siècles),” Mémoires de la Société d’histoire et d’archéologie de Bretagne 4 (1923): 3–30; D. Grémont, L. Donnat, “Fleury, Le Mont et l’Angleterre à la fin du Xe siècle et au début du XIe siècle. À propos du manuscrit d’Orléans n° 127 (105),” in Millénaire monastique du Mont-Saint-Michel, Vol. 1 (Paris: P. Lethielleux, 1966), pp. 751–93; Dom L. Donnat, “Recherches sur l’influence de Fleury au Xe siècle,” Études ligériennes d’histoire et d’archéologie médiévales. Mémoires et exposés présentés à la Semaine d’études médiévales de Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire du 3 au 10 juillet 1969, ed. R. Louis (Auxerre: Société des fouilles archéologiques et des monuments historiques de l’Yonne, 1975), pp. 165–74; J.-M. Berland, “L’influence de l’abbaye de Fleury-sur-Loire en Bretagne et dans les Îles Britanniques du Xe au XIIe siècle,” in 107e Congrès national des Sociétés savantes, Brest, 1982, Section de philologie et d’histoire jusqu’à 1610, t. 2 (Paris: Ministère de l’éducation nationale, Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques, 1984), pp. 275–99. M. Mostert, “Le séjour d’Abbon de Fleury à Ramsey,” Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes 144 (1986): 199–208. Birgit Ebersperger, Die angelsächsischen Handschriften in den Pariser Bibliotheken. Mit einer Edition von Ælfrics Kirchenweihhomilie aus der Handschrift Paris, BN, lat. 943 (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1999), no. 6, pp. 44–51. Léopold Delisle, “Mémoire sur d’anciens sacramentaires,” Mémoires de l’Institut National de France. Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 32 (1886): 213–5; Grémont and Donnat, “Fleury, Le Mont et l’Angleterre”; The Winchcombe Sacramentary: Orléans, Bibliothèque Municipale, 127 (105), ed. Anselme Davril (London: Henry Bradshaw Society, 1995). Ebersperger, no. 49, pp. 190–91; Francis Wormald, “The ‘Winchester School’ before St. Ethelwold,” in England before the Conquest: Studies in Primary Sources Presented to Dorothy Whitelock, ed. Peter Clemoes and

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27. 28. 29.

30.

31. 32. 33.

34.

35. 36.

Kathleen Hughes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), reprinted in Francis Wormald: Collected Writings I. Studies in Medieval Art from the Sixth to the Twelfth Centuries, ed. J.J.G. Alexander, T.J. Brown, and J. Gibbs (Oxford: Harvey Miller Publishers/Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 83. Francis Wormald, English Drawings of the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries (London: Faber & Faber, 1952), pp. 32–3 and plates 13–14. Jean Vezin, “Leofnoth. Un scribe anglais à Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire,” Codices manuscripti 3 (1977): 109–120. M.B. Parkes, “An Anglo- Saxon Text at Fleury: The Manuscript of the Leiden Riddle,” in his Scribes, Scripts and Readers. Studies in the Communication, Presentation, and Dissemination of Medieval Texts (London: Hambledon Press, 1991), pp. 263–74. Two further palimpsests could be of Fleury provenance: Bern, Burgerbibliothek MS 611 (s. v and vii, Italy, palimpsested s. viii), and Vatican, Reg. Lat. MS 74 (s. viii Luxeuil?, palimpsested s. xi–xii). See Lowe, “Codices rescripti” and Mostert, The Library of Fleury. Cf. Frère Denis, “Les anciens manuscrits de Fleury,” 272 and 266, plate I. Cf. Berger, Le palimpseste de Fleury. E.A. Lowe, Codices Latini Antiquiores. A Palaeographical Guide to Latin Manuscripts Prior to the Ninth Century, Part VI. France: Abbeville-Valenciennes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953), no. 820. The manuscript contains in this order: pp. 1–59 Vita S. Nicholai; pp. 59–69 Vita S. Alexii [not 59–68, as in Van der Straeten (references hereafter)]; pp. 69–153 Vita S. Athanasii [rubric on p. 69, not 70, as in Van der Straeten; see also fig. 1.8]; pp. 153–182 Sermo S. Augustini de Natale Domini; pp. 183–202 De S. Cruce; pp. 203–210 Sermones de Natale Innocentium; pp. 210–21 Miraculum S. Anastasii; pp. 221–22 Epistula Chromatii et Eliodori ad Ieronimum; pp. 223–30 Sermo S. Optati in natale SS. innocentium; pp. 233–44 Passio S. Theclae. See now Joseph van der Straeten, Les manuscrits hagiographiques d’Orléans, Tours et Angers avec plusieurs textes inédits, Subsidia hagiographica 64 (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1982), pp. 72–73. Cf. Lowe, CLA VI, no. 820: “26 long lines.” I thank Anne Laurent from the photographic department of the IRHTOrléans. In a message to me on December 3, 2007, Madame Laurent expressed the skepticism of the IRHT specialists about the possibility of getting better results: “Nous avons essayé de faire ressortir le texte effacé en éclairant la feuille par en dessous mais cela n’a pas été plus concluant que la prise de vue traditionnelle. Mon collègue Gilles Kagan, qui a de l’expérience dans ce domaine, doute qu’il y ait des procédés adaptés à ce manuscrit pour la prise de vue.” See, however, J.-P. Despré, “Les applications de la photographie à la lecture des documents effacés (ultra-violet, infra-rouge, transparence),” in L. Fossier and J. Irigoin, eds., Déchiffrer les écritures effacées (Paris: CNRS éditions, 1990), pp. 11–17.

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37. See J.F. Benton, “Electronic Subtraction of the Superior Writing of a Palimpsest,” in Fossier and Irigoin, eds., Déchiffrer les écritures effacées, pp. 95–104; N. Tchernentska, “Do It Yourself: Digital Image Enhancement Applied to Greek Palimpsests,” in Declercq, ed. Early Medieval Palimpsests, pp. 23–7; and Peter A. Stokes’s essay in this volume. 38. I thank Olivier Morand, archiviste-paléographe at the Médiathèque d’Orléans for answering my preliminary questions on the state of research on O, and Anne Monginoux, curator of manuscripts at the same library, who has once again kindly authorized me to take photographs of the manuscript for private research. 39. See Peter A. Stokes’s essay in this volume. 40. T.J. Brown, “The Distribution and Significance of Membrane Prepared in the Insular Manner,” in A Palaeographer’s View: The Selected Writings of Julian Brown, ed. Janet Bately, Michelle P. Brown, and Jane Roberts (London: Harvey Miller Publishers, 1993), pp. 125–39. 41. Helmut Gneuss, Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts. A List of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100, MRTS 241 (Tempe, AZ: ACMRS, 2001), p. 134: “s. x/xi, England or Fleury?” 42. T.A.M. Bishop, English Caroline Minuscule (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971). 43. See notes 28 and 29.

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CHAPTER 2 RECOVERING ANGLO-SAXON ERASURES: SOME QUESTIONS, TOOLS, AND TECHNIQUES Peter A. Stokes

This essay provides practical instruction in enhancing digital images of damaged or palimpsested manuscripts, encompassing basic principles, “hands-on” techniques, and the ethics of enhancement.

T

he “virtual” restoration of manuscripts by use of computers has received a good deal of attention in recent years. Perhaps best known is the so-called Archimedes Palimpsest, but other high-profile cases include the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Herculaneum papyri, and Codex Sinaiticus, all of which have been the subject and object of an extraordinary amount of highly specialized and hugely expensive research, as well as extensive media coverage.1 However, using technology to recover text from damaged manuscripts need not necessarily require such effort and money, and much smaller projects are taking place all the time with relatively little financial outlay.2 Such work does require some skill and practice, and no amount of skill is sufficient to recover material from the most severely damaged cases, but sufficiently good results can often be obtained with an average desktop computer and some readily available software. Given the relative ease with which this can be done, it is worth attempting such an approach before considering more expensive options and certainly before giving up entirely. The primary purpose of this essay, then, is to illustrate how otherwise lost readings can possibly be recovered by using high-resolution but otherwise unremarkable digital photographs of the sort that are now readily obtainable from many manuscript libraries. Not all possible types of damage can be considered here, and so the focus is on writing that has faded or been erased, possibly also

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having been overwritten at a later time, but the principles can be applied to many other situations as well. Palimpsested, Erased, and Damaged Manuscripts in Anglo- Saxon England To begin, it is worth looking brief ly at the surviving material from Anglo- Saxon England in terms of difficult or illegible readings and to ask how they differ with an eye to potential recovery. The first thing to note is that there are very few palimpsests that survive from Anglo- Saxon England. Neil Ker noted only one fragment containing Old English that is a “true” example, and observed that this was palimpsested in Trier rather than England.3 Lowe, with slightly looser criteria, gave three more entries and noted one more that he rejected from his list.4 Despite this relative dearth, there are still many examples of erasure and rewriting in Anglo- Saxon manuscripts.5 Most of these are relatively straightforward corrections to individual words or letters, and recovering the original readings may be very useful to anyone trying to understand the process by which the manuscript was copied or compiled. Rather different in nature is the much smaller corpus of material that has been erased more fully, perhaps with a different text written over the top, but without the entire page being cleaned off as is normally required for a palimpsest. These include most notably erased inscriptions that can give important evidence about provenance and also the body of documents, including those in Old English, which have been erased from gospel books or other liturgical manuscripts.6 In addition to these cases resulting from deliberate erasure, we also have cases of apparently accidental wear with the result much like that of erasure. Examples here include the copy of Solomon and Saturn that is now on pages 1–26 of Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 422, and the endorsement (perhaps erased or more likely heavily rubbed) of London, British Library Cotton Augustus ii. 6, a single- sheet charter from Pershore.7 Similar in the category of accidental loss are some inks that have faded very badly, to the point of illegibility. Fortunately the iron-gall inks used by the Anglo-Saxons were normally quite dark and also quite chemically stable, thus the manuscripts are generally free from fading or corrosion. However, the red inks used for rubrics were not always so stable, and in some cases they have faded quite significantly.8 Clean erasures, rubbing, and faded ink are usually relatively easy to recover. This assumes that the parchment is fairly clean and uniform in the region of the illegible text, and that at least some of the text remains and that the difference in color between the illegible writing and the parchment is still large enough for a digital camera to capture it. Rather

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more complicated, and also more common in Anglo- Saxon material, is when the illegible writing is obscured by other ink on top, as is often the case with corrections or obliterated inscriptions. Similar but complex in somewhat different ways are those where the damage has resulted not so much in faded ink as darkened parchment. If the parchment is uniform in discoloration, then it again can usually be enhanced without too much difficulty. In practice, however, this is rarely the case. Indeed, perhaps the largest body of illegible script comes from the library of Sir Robert Cotton. This now forms the Cotton collection in the British Library and is the single largest repository of material in Old English and indeed of Anglo- Saxon manuscripts in general.9 Unfortunately the books were badly damaged in a fire in 1731, as a result of which many of the pages are now burnt, shrunken, split, dirty, darkened by fire or water, or any combination of these.10 A Short Introduction to Computer Imaging This is the problem, one that has been encountered by almost everyone who works with medieval (or even modern) manuscripts. But what are the possible solutions? Fortunately, there is now a lot that can be done very cheaply and easily in this age of powerful and easily accessible computers and with the relative availability of digital photographs. Most of the remainder of this essay will therefore consider some of the ways in which lost and, particularly, erased readings can be restored. The field of digital image enhancement is very large and very active, and even a brief survey of the field is far beyond the scope of this essay. Instead of attempting to do this, therefore, it seems more productive to consider some relatively basic but still proven techniques that were developed through practical experience, particularly that gained while working for the British Library on a project to digitally restore its entire collection of Greek palimpsests.11 None of these techniques require any special photography, computer hardware, or rare or expensive software. To use them effectively, however, one must first understand at least a few basics of computer imaging. The first step in any enhancement is to obtain a digital photograph of the manuscript in question. Although often underestimated, this is by no means trivial and needs to be done with some care. Indeed, it is properly the subject of an entire essay by itself, and fortunately it has already been treated very competently elsewhere and so will not be discussed further here.12 Let us assume that there is available a high- quality digital photograph taken in natural light in a standard format such as TIFF. This photograph,

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like any digital image, is in essence a grid of colored points. Each element in the grid is known as a “picture element,” or “pixel,” and each pixel is assigned a particular color to create an image. The principle is straightforward, but the details are rather more complex. Particularly relevant here is the question of color. In terms of physics, color is simply a way of sensing different wavelengths of visible light. At the risk of oversimplifying both quantum mechanics and human psychology, light can be thought of as waves in an electromagnetic field, and as the wave oscillates more or less quickly, so we perceive this wave as different colors. Thus slower waves look red to us, slightly faster ones look orange, and so on through the entire spectrum, going via yellow, green, and blue, in that order. These wavelengths are then sensed by the optic nerves and interpreted by the brain as color, and indeed most people can distinguish millions of different colors without any effort. Such is the case for people, but computers work rather differently. The problem is how to represent color inside a computer in such a way that the computer can store, manipulate, and ultimately reproduce what is in essence a physical, if not psychological, phenomenon. Ultimately, computers are designed in such a way that they can only work with one type of information—numbers—and therefore every piece of data that we want to put into a computer must somehow be encoded as a number. To phrase the problem slightly differently, engineers need a way to take a specific wavelength of visible light and represent that as a number, and conversely to take a number and represent that as a specific wavelength of light. In practice, this is exactly what scanners and digital cameras do on the one hand, and printers and monitors do on the other. Scanners and digital cameras contain sensors that measure the wavelengths of light and represent them as numbers for processing and storing in a computer. Monitors take those stored numbers and convert them back into visible light. Printers also convert numbers into colors, but in a different way: rather than generating light directly, they produce inks that absorb light that is already there in the room. This difference has some important implications, but fortunately they are of little immediate consequence for digital image enhancement and do not need to be considered here.13 How does all of this work in practice? There are many different ways of storing colors and images.14 When displaying images on a monitor, the same principle is almost always used: the so-called RGB, or “red-greenblue” color system. This principle is very simple, namely that every color that can be displayed on a monitor is represented by three different numbers, with these numbers representing the amount of red light, green light, and blue light, respectively. It may seem rather counterintuitive, but it is possible to produce almost all visible colors simply by mixing

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different amounts of red, green, and blue light. If this were not the case, then it would be almost impossible to build monitors that could display more than just a few colors, as millions of differently colored lights would need to be produced in every monitor and television, rather than three different light sources as are used in practice. The reason why only three colors are necessary is based on the biology of human vision. Specifically, human eyes have three different color sensors that detect light at different frequencies. One sensor is most sensitive to light at the red end of the spectrum, one is most sensitive to light toward the blue end, and the third, the most sensitive, is active around the green region. This principle is shown in Figure 2.1, where the curves ref lect the relative sensitivities of the three sensors at different wavelengths. Yellow light, for example, causes a response of a certain intensity in the “green” sensor and also a response of another intensity in the “red” sensor, and our brain mixes these two responses together and interprets them as yellow. However, the important point here is that the same two responses can be reproduced by using two different lights of different color and intensity, neither of which is yellow, and shining these two lights together onto the same sensors in our eye. These two different lights, if correctly chosen, will stimulate these two sensors exactly as a single yellow light would have done, and thus the brain interprets these two lights as one. This is the secret of color displays, and if one looks (~535 nm) (~575 nm)

Relative absorbtion (arbitrary units)

(~445 nm)

400 Violet

450 Blue

500 Green

550 Yellow

600 650 Orange Red

700

Wavelength (nanometres)

Figure 2.1 Intensity curves. Source: Based on Carl Nave, “The Color- Sensitive Cones,” in Hyperphysics (2005), Georgia State University, http://hyperphysics.phy- astr.gsu.edu.

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very closely at an older television screen or very old computer monitor, one will notice that the three differently colored lights are visible to the naked eye. How does this relate to the storage of color in a computer? As noted above, most modern computers represent the color of each pixel with three numbers; these numbers in turn represent the intensities of the red, green, and blue lights that are required to produce the color in question. These intensities are usually encoded using a whole number from zero to 255 (inclusive), so zero is “off,” or no light at all, and 255 is “on full,” or maximum brightness. This gives us 256 different intensities for each of the three lights, and thus 256×256×256=16,777,216 different colors in total.15 Note that this is a maximum number of colors that can be represented internally; the number that can be displayed on most monitors is less and depends on the quality of the monitor and how well it is configured. With this system, the basic colors—red, green, and blue—can be represented by (255, 0, 0), (0, 255, 0), and (0, 0, 255), respectively. Mixing two of these colors in each of the three possible combinations gives cyan, magenta, and yellow, as (0, 255, 255), (255, 0, 255), and (255, 255, 0), respectively.16 Black is produced by showing no light at all, as one would expect, and so all three values are set to zero. White is somewhat less intuitive: it is the result of all three sensors in the eye receiving maximum value, and this translates to having all three lights on full, so (255, 255, 255). Grays are achieved by mixing the three colors in equal amounts; thus (100, 100, 100) is dark gray, (127, 127, 127) is mid-gray, and (200, 200, 200) is light gray. Note that two of the three values are therefore redundant in these cases, and so an entire image that is purely gray requires only one number for each pixel; this point will become important shortly. Image Processing: Techniques Now that a few basic points have been considered regarding image processing; it remains to be seen how these can be used. There are many different techniques and principles, of course, and only a very small selection can be considered here. Specifically, two important principles of image manipulation will be examined: adjusting histograms and manipulating color channels. Histograms One of the most important principles in image processing is the histogram. Histograms are widely used in statistics, and in principle simply

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Hands Codices

80

Charters 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 London, British Cambridge, Oxford, Bodleian Other British Library Corpus Christi Library Libraries

Continental Europe

United States of America

Figure 2.2 Example of a histogram.

represent counts of items; a trivial example is shown in Figure 2.2. In image processing, the histogram of an image shows the number of pixels in that image that have been set to a particular color. Normally the histograms are separated into each of the three color channels for ease of representation. For example, consider a plain yellow square. As discussed above, yellow is formed by a mixture of red and green light, and thus in a digital image of this square, most of the pixels are very bright in the red and green channels and very dark in the blue channel. This is ref lected in the three histograms for that image, shown in Figure 2.3. Another example is shown in Figure 2.4: this time many of the pixels are bright blue and without much red or green, and this can easily be explained by the bright blue sky in the photograph. There is also some medium-intensity yellow in the sand, and some dark colors in the bushes, and these are also ref lected in the peaks in the middle of the red and green histograms and at the lower end of all three histograms. Histograms are useful as a quick statistical summary of an image and the distribution of colors within it. They can also be used to manipulate the image by altering those statistics. In particular, the histogram ref lects the range of different colors in an image, and by manipulating this we can improve the visibility of that image. For example, consider a very

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Red

Green

Blue

Figure 2.3 Histograms for a yellow square (histograms generated using GIMP).

Red

Green

Blue

Figure 2.4 Histograms for a desert scene (note very narrow peak at extreme right of blue histogram), where the sky is blue and the sand yellow. (Photo by the author.)

faint portion of text on an otherwise white parchment. The question is how to recover this erasure, and this depends in turn on what “very faint” means to a computer. “Very faint” really means that the writing is almost the same color as the parchment and therefore that there is too little difference between the writing and the parchment for the human eye to see the letters. We can see this by creating an artificial “erasure” by writing faint text on top of a colored background and then looking at the resulting histograms, as shown in Figure 2.5. The narrow peak in the histogram indicates that there is a very small range of different colors in the image, and furthermore that all of these colors are very close to each

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Figure 2.5 Model “erasure” and accompanying histogram (in grayscale) generated by GIMP.

other. However, as noted above, the average computer display can show millions of colors, and so one way of improving the image is to spread out the colors in the image, using more of the available range and thereby increasing the difference between writing and background. Fortunately, we can do this very easily with a computer. This spreading of histograms, like many other techniques of image enhancement, can be achieved with a variety of different pieces of software. I shall confine my discussion to the two that are widely used and readily accessible: Adobe Photoshop CS and the GNU Image Manipulation Program, or GIMP.17 Photoshop is commercially available and must be purchased, but is already present on many computers, particularly in academic systems. GIMP, in contrast, is published under the GNU Public Licence, or GPL, and so it can be downloaded from the Internet for free.18 Both pieces of software are available for Windows and Mac OS X systems; GIMP is also available for Linux. The process of spreading out the colors of our faint writing is the same in both Photoshop and GIMP, and in both cases the command is called “Level Adjust.” Selecting this command from the relevant menu brings up a dialog box, which contains a histogram of the image and various controls to manipulate it. The full details of this are rather complex, but further information can be found in the user manual for the relevant software. The key to understanding what needs to be done is to look at the histogram. In some cases there will be a single peak that is fairly narrow, and the rest of the histogram will be low and f lat. This narrow peak confirms that most of the pixels in the image are almost the same color and therefore that it is difficult to distinguish different parts of the image. In other cases there may be two distinct peaks; for example, in a palimpsest with dark overwriting and faint underwriting that is approximately the same color as the parchment. Another possibility is one somewhat wider

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Figure 2.6 Three types of histograms (generated by GIMP).

peak with two sub-peaks; this might be the result of writing that is faint but still distinguishable from the background. All of these cases are illustrated in Figure 2.6. To enhance the image, the range of colors needs to be increased. In other words, the lightest colors in the image need to be made very light, and the darkest colors very dark. For example, all of the pixels in a given channel in the image might have intensities between 100 and 150. In this case, pixels in that channel with an intensity of 100 should be reassigned to an intensity of zero, and those of 150 to an intensity of 255, with everything in between being spread out evenly across the full range of 0–255. This makes the darkest pixels black and the lightest ones white, and it increases the difference in color between all of the pixels in the image in that channel. To do this in Photoshop or GIMP, we need to specify the range of intensities below which all pixels should be assigned to black, and similarly the range above which the pixels should become maximum. This is achieved by two small arrows that are visible at the bottom of the appropriate histogram. Initially one arrow is pointing to the very bottom of the histogram, and the other is pointing to the very top; thus the lowest possible value, 0, is black, and the highest, 255, is full intensity. As we move the lower pointer up, more of the darker colors are assigned to black, and the intermediate colors are spread out farther and farther across the resulting range. The equivalent occurs as we move the upper pointer down. In most cases, the lower pointer should be positioned at the point where the large peak just begins to grow, and similarly the upper pointer should be positioned at the other side of the peak. Because this is such a common requirement, most software packages have an “auto” button on the level adjust; clicking on this automatically positions the pointers at the level the computer thinks will be most useful. This is good as a starting guess, and it can then be adjusted manually. The software also usually allows adjusting different channels individually, or adjusting the combined intensity of all channels at once. This very simple technique can be remarkably effective with faded writing and is also very quick to do. It does have one significant limitation, namely that it enhances everything together without any easy way

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of discriminating between what is desired and what is not. It is therefore most effective when the parchment is very clean and smooth, since otherwise even faint blemishes such as hair follicles will become clear in exactly the same way that the faint writing does. In practice this means that it is most useful for clean erasures or ink that has naturally faded on otherwise good parchment. It is generally much less useful for dirty parchment, including that which has been blackened by fire, and it normally works better with the f lesh side of parchment than the hair side. Even with these limitations, this is still a quick and simple technique that can be very effective, and so it is usually worth trying as a first step. Channel Manipulation The other approach to be considered is somewhat more complex, but it overcomes some of the difficulties of the simple Level Adjust. This second approach uses the computer’s representation of color to our advantage. As has been discussed above, every pixel in a color image can be represented by three numbers. This raises the possibility of adding, subtracting, or otherwise manipulating these numbers inside a computer. In particular, we could calculate a “weighted average” of the three values for every pixel in the entire image. As one example, we could take 30 percent of the red channel, 60 percent of the green channel, and 10 percent of the blue channel, and add the three values together to produce a single number. This may seem like a pointless exercise, but it is extremely useful because, as has been discussed above, if each pixel has a single value, then the image can still be displayed, but in shades of gray instead of in color. If the proportions of each channel are chosen correctly, then the results can be striking. To illustrate, let us consider an ideal, artificial example. Imagine first that the parchment is pure white, and that it has some dirt on it that is gray. Let us also imagine that we have a palimpsest where the overwriting—that is, the top writing that we want to get rid of—is entirely black. Finally, let the underwriting that we want to recover be bright red. In this case, adjusting the levels has little benefit as it would enhance the overwriting and dirt just as much as it would the underwriting. To overcome this, the color channels need to be manipulated in such a way as to remove the noise and overwriting but to leave the underwriting intact. Specifically, if we subtract the blue channel from the red channel while ignoring the green channel entirely, we obtain the values shown in Table 2.1. The numbers in the Red, Green, and Blue columns give the values in each of those channels for the four different materials in the image, and the fourth column gives the result of the manipulation. If we

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Color values of artificial “palimpsest”

Item

Red

Green

Blue

Red column minus Blue column

Parchment (white)

255

255

255

0 (black)

Dirt (gray)

122

122

122

0 (black)

0

0

0

0 (black)

255

0

0

255 (white)

Overwriting (black) Underwriting (red)

Table 2.2 Color values of second artificial “palimpsest” Item

Red

Green

Blue

Red column minus 84% of Green column

Parchment (white)

255

255

255

41 (dark gray)

Dirt (gray)

238

238

238

38 (dark gray)

Overwriting (faint red)

151

135

135

38 (dark gray)

Underwriting (faint pink)

243

219

219

60 (lighter gray)

display the result as a grayscale image, then all of the noise, overwriting, and parchment will be black, and the underwriting is left on its own as entirely white. The example just given is clearly ideal and it is unreasonable to expect such results in practice. Nevertheless, the principle still holds with more complex examples. If the parchment is still white and the dirt still gray, but the overwriting and underwriting are more similar to each other in color and the underwriting is quite faint, then the intensities might be something like those shown in Table 2.2. In this case, we need to subtract only a portion of the green channel, 84 percent to be precise, as again shown in Table 2.2. Once again the resulting image has parchment, dirt, and overwriting all approximately the same value, and the underwriting significantly different. The underwriting is still quite dark, however, as is apparent from the figures in Table 2.2. Fortunately this is again the problem of faint script, and the solution is simply to adjust the levels, as discussed above. The results of this are shown in Figure 2.7, with the first image being the original before any enhancement, and the second the result of manipulation as just described. The question that remains is how to perform these manipulations in practice. The relative weightings of the three channels can be obtained by a series of mathematical calculations, but fortunately this is not normally

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(a)

(b)

Figure 2.7 Results of channel manipulation. The upper one (a) is original, the lower (b) is enhanced.

required.19 Instead, many programs such as Photoshop or GIMP allow the user to adjust the weightings of the three channels and to see the results immediately; this allows good results to be obtained relatively quickly just by trial and error. The menu items to do this vary slightly, but are the same in principle. With Photoshop, for example, it is performed using the “Calculations . . . ” command in the “Image” menu. In GIMP it is “Channel Mixer . . . ,” which is found under “Components” in the “Colors” menu.20 Again, the details vary, but usually a dialog box is presented with three sliders, one for each channel, and these can be adjusted to give the different weights. In some cases one can choose

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between color and monochrome output; in this case monochrome is normally the more useful. It is often also possible to “preserve luminosity,” but this is rarely useful in practice. It can be helpful to turn this feature on while the weights of the different channels are still being adjusted, but it should normally be turned off again before the dialog box is closed and the settings accepted. Combining Techniques Using Layers Two different techniques for enhancing images have been presented so far. How, then, can they be used in combination for a particular image? There is no single answer as every case has its own challenges. However, experience has shown that the following sequence of steps is often effective: 1. Blur the image. 2. Copy the image. 3. Manipulate the channels of one copy of the image, as described above. 4. Adjust the levels of this copy of the image, as described above. 5. Invert the adjusted copy of the image if necessary. 6. Paste the adjusted copy of the image back onto the original in a new layer. 7. Change the form of overlay to that which is most effective (usually one of “Normal,” “Multiply,” or “Difference”). 8. Try adjusting the levels of the lower (original) image. 9. Flatten the resulting image. 10. Adjust the levels of the f lattened image, as described above. Steps 2–4, 8, and 10 are either described above or are simple operations that should be familiar to anyone who uses a computer. The remaining steps require further explanation. The first step listed above is to blur the image. This may seem counterintuitive, as the final objective is to obtain a clear image. However, blurring an image normally reduces the impact of small, sudden changes of color and increases the impact of larger blocks of color. This is often precisely what we want in an image, as the small sudden changes are often hair follicles, bits of dirt, and so on, and the larger blocks of color are often ink and parchment. This assumes a high-resolution image and it also depends on the blurring that is used, but often the writing is more legible after blurring. Blurring is a simple function that is present in programs like Adobe Photoshop and GIMP, and indeed most such programs

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offer several forms of blur. In practice it usually makes little difference which is chosen, and the simple “Blur” is normally sufficient.21 A similar alternative is the “Despeckle” filter, which is present in both Adobe Photoshop and GIMP. This is designed to remove small points of dirt and such without blurring other features, such as the line between ink and parchment. As always, experimentation is required to see which is most effective. Step 5 suggests inversion of the image. This depends on the relative weightings given to the channels in Step 4; very often the main script is white and the parchment black, as described in the examples of the previous section. If this is the case, then the image can be inverted so that the script is black on a white background. Although this is not necessary simply to read the text, it is required for the following stages to be successful. Steps 6–9 specify pasting the enhanced image back onto the original as a new layer. In software like Photoshop and GIMP, images are treated as having layers that sit on top of one another. This is most obviously useful for people who are creating original artwork. If one wishes to put text onto a photograph, for example, then the photograph could be on one layer and the text on another. This allows the artist to treat the two elements separately, to make one layer invisible in order to work better with the other, and so on. This can also be used for enhancing images, but in a slightly different way. The procedure is to copy the enhanced image, then select the original image and paste on top of it. The details vary according to the program, but normally the pasted image will be “f loating” on top of the original and will obscure it entirely. However, there will also normally be a “Layers” palette or menu in the software, and this will have an option to “Create New Layer” from the pasted image. This allows the user to show the lower, original image, the new image on top, or both. However, it also allows combining two images in different ways by selecting different “modes.” Again, experimentation will reveal the most effective combination, but often “Normal,” “Multiply,” or “Difference” is the most effective.22 It should be noted that the relative opacity of the layers can also be controlled. Thus, using “Normal” mode with the default opacity of 100 percent means that the top layer obscures the lower one entirely. However, as the opacity is reduced, the lower layer becomes visible. Once again, experimentation can yield very good results. Finally, when the result is satisfactory, the image can be “f lattened.” This is a simple operation that combines the different layers into one so that the result can be saved as a single image in TIFF format or similar. To aid in this process, a summary of some of the more useful functions in both Photoshop and GIMP is given in Table 2.3.

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50 Table 2.3

PETER A. STOK ES

Summary of relevant functions in Photoshop and GIMP

Function

Adobe Photoshop CS

GIMP

Blur

Filter > Blur > Blur Filter > Noise > Despeckle

Combine Channels

Image > Calculations . . .

Level Adjust Rotate

Image > Adjustments > Levels . . . Image > Rotate Canvas or Select All, then Edit > Transform > Rotate

Filters > Blur > Blur Filters > Enhance > Despeckle Colors > Channel Mixer . . . or Colors > Decompose . . . Colors > Levels . . . Image > Transform > Rotate or “Image Rotate” Tool

Invert Colors Show Histogram Image Overlay

Image > Adjustments > Invert Window > Histogram Copy & paste image, then “Layers” Window Layer > Flatten Image

Flatten Image

Colors > Invert Colors > Histogram Copy & paste image, then “Layers” Window Image > Flatten Image

Note that in versions of GIMP earlier than 2.4, Colors is a submenu under Layers, and both Decompose and Channel Mixer are in Filters > Color Filters.

The Image Viewer The discussion so far has provided a few basic tools that can be used to good effect when recovering illegible writing from medieval manuscripts. There is a series of steps that can be tried, and these are often sufficient. Putting these steps into practice is by no means trivial, however. In particular, almost all of them allow some degree of freedom and therefore require some degree of experimentation in turn. One must decide whether, how, and by how much to blur the image; what weights to give the different channels; how much to adjust the levels; what mode of overlay to use; and so on. Unfortunately, the implications of each decision are not clear until the very end of the process. If the blur is not appropriate, then one must return to the very beginning and repeat the entire procedure, particularly since the previously obtained values for channel weighting, level adjustment, and so on are potentially made invalid by the altered blur. This is a significant obstacle in practice and is one of the biggest impediments to the rapid and effective enhancement of images. To avoid this difficulty I propose a different model for the manipulation of images. Instead of viewing the entire procedure as a sequence of discrete, one-off steps, with each having to be completed before the next is begun, it seems more useful to consider the whole process as a continuous f low. Specifically, it would be very useful for the person trying to recover

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the reading if the final result of all the stages could be seen even as the settings for an early stage are being adjusted. There are at least two good reasons why software such as Photoshop and GIMP do not do this. One is that it is entirely unnecessary for most people, as in most cases the output of a given step can immediately be seen to have been successful or otherwise. Furthermore, the alternative view of image processing requires a great deal of computing power since the entire sequence of operations must be repeated every time a single value is changed; the only difference is that the computer does it automatically rather than requiring human intervention. Nevertheless, computers have become increasingly powerful and are capable of carrying out such processing at greater speeds. In many cases, moreover, the writing that a researcher wishes to recover is confined to a relatively small part of the page, in which case the image in question is similarly small and thus relatively fast to process. All of these factors suggest that a system such as this may be of value. To test this principle, I have developed prototype software to implement such a system that incorporates the basic techniques discussed in this essay, along with one or two others.23 The interface is arranged rather differently from conventional image-manipulation software: rather than being commands in menus, the various stages are represented by a sequential series of panels that runs down one side of the screen. This is illustrated in Figure 2.8. This may look more imposing at first, but it allows the researcher to see immediately all of the stages in the processing, to know what settings have been used for each stage, and to adjust those settings with immediate effect. Although not yet possible, in principle the researcher should be able to change the order of these panels, and to add or delete panels as required. Indeed, almost all of the functionality in Photoshop or GIMP could theoretically be implemented in this way, although this would be limited by the time required for processing. Indeed, to overcome this limitation, two further options have been added. The first is currently labeled “Live Updates”: when selected, it updates the image continuously with every adjustment; thus, if a slider is moved, then the image is processed for each of a series of intermediate values between the start and end points of the slider. This means that the image changes before the eyes of the person moving the slider: a feature that is very useful when trying to establish the ideal setting but which can make the whole system very slow and unresponsive for large images or complex processes. Similarly, the user can select “Show Original Image,” in which case the image is shown as it was before any enhancement. This serves two purposes. One is simply to compare “before” and “after” images and thereby to establish how much

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Figure 2.8 ImageViewer control panel (on Mac OS X). Software by the author.

a given series of enhancements has improved the legibility of the text. The other is for reasons of performance. If the researcher has a pretty good guess of what the best settings might be, then he or she may wish to refrain from processing the image until the correct settings are all in place. This avoids the problems of performance, as the image is not actually processed until the “Show Original Image” option is deselected. Thus, even a very complex process can be set up without any impact on performance and then run once when the original image is no longer shown. In many respects this is like the model provided by Photoshop or GIMP, in that the whole process is done once and so the user cannot see the effect of specific changes. The difference with this new system, however, is that the researcher can still alter values of early stages without repeating the entire process.

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Reproducibility and the Ethics of Enhancement One fundamental issue of both practical and theoretical importance underlies all of this work on image enhancement for scholarly purposes: that of reproducibility, with the associated issues of documentation and accountability. Scholars are often suspicious of image enhancement, and for good reason: all manner of dishonesty can be perpetrated with a bit of practice. Furthermore, it is not unusual for the script of an enhanced image to be legible on a computer screen but difficult or impossible to capture in print. These issues raise the question of how one can verify claims of a particular reading. The answer, I think, is readily available in the sciences, where each experimental procedure must be documented in such a way that it can be reproduced and verified by independent researchers; only after such verification can the result then be accepted by the scientific community. Translating this to the present situation, it follows that a very precise record must be kept of exactly what was done to any given image so that anyone else can repeat the steps and independently verify the results. Fortunately, an international standard already exists for the recording of such information about an image—the very existence of such a standard highlights its importance. 24 Although such a standard exists, it is still very difficult to implement in practice for three reasons. The first is that the standard itself is very difficult to set up, and it requires a very high level of technical understanding to make it useable for a given situation. This is not such a problem in a large- scale project (for which it is designed), as such projects normally have the required expertise available; it is a substantial difficulty for scholars working on their own individual research, however. The second difficulty is that simply recording the relevant data is tedious and very prone to error. Packages like Photoshop and GIMP offer no easy facility to record operations in a way that they can be easily transferred to other systems. It therefore requires a great deal of discipline for anyone enhancing images to note manually every setting of every stage throughout the entire process, and the potential to forget this is very high, particularly when so much experimentation is required. The third difficulty is that the precise algorithms applied by proprietary software such as Photoshop are rarely made public. The standard requires noting not only what operation was carried out, but also what software and what version of the software was used. This means that the operation can be repeated in principle, but it depends on the precise version of software still being available. The problem is somewhat alleviated with open- source projects like GIMP because one can examine the internals of the software to see

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exactly what process was applied, and these details can then be included in the record of steps taken. However, examining complex computer code like this is not something that even the most computer-literate scholars in the humanities would wish or be able to do. To overcome these three substantial hurdles, the prototype system described above automatically logs all of the steps that have been taken, describes those steps in terms of standard and well- documented algorithms, and includes all the values of all the settings for each step clearly expressed. This information can then be displayed for the user’s reference or saved to disk in a format that conforms to the recognized standard. This requirement for documentation and reproducibility has one major disadvantage when applied to image enhancement in that it reduces the number of tools available for use. For example, Craig- McFeely has noted that one cannot blindly apply a single process to an entire document, but that any successful enhancement requires a great deal of detailed human interaction.25 Her methods include the painstaking use of particular tools in Adobe Photoshop to work on one small and very precise area of the image at a time. Her methods are extremely effective and should certainly not be dismissed. However, the application of different tools numerous times to small areas of the image means that it is almost impossible to record her interventions with sufficient detail and accuracy for them to be reproduced. In contrast, broad techniques that are applied equally to the whole image (such as “Level Adjust” and channel manipulation discussed above) can be recorded and reproduced relatively easily. This leads to something of a conundrum about the extent to which demonstrably valuable techniques should be eschewed in favor of the more theoretical demand for precise documentation. Granted there is no theoretical reason why software cannot automatically record the localized, labor-intensive methods that Craig- McFeely uses. In practice, this is unlikely to become part of standard software packages like Photoshop or GIMP in the short or even medium term simply because such records are of interest to so few people that they would not justify the effort involved in implementing them. Perhaps more likely is that improved methods of image processing will require less human intervention of this sort and will therefore allow proper documentation to accompany good results. Whatever the case, the ideal given current software would be to use only techniques that are purely statistical, that is, where the same sequence of processes is applied equally to the whole image rather than the closely localized use of different tools and processes in different places. These “whole image” techniques may very well require careful and extensive human intervention, and we may still be some distance from devising techniques that are sufficiently effective,

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but the final result, in an ideal world, must surely be one that can be recorded and reproduced. This problem of accountability slides into what Julia Craig-McFeely calls “ethical enhancement.”26 The question is at what point enhancement becomes active intervention, and how much of the latter should be permitted. This can be illustrated by reference to Figure 2.9, which shows two small portions of what seems to be perfectly legitimate twelfth-century script, and it probably comes as no surprise to learn that both derive from a genuine, original cartulary that was produced at Bath. However, only one is a photograph of the manuscript; the other is fabricated by using GIMP to copy letters from the document and piece them together to form a new word that is almost entirely indistinguishable from the original. This is in essence a more sophisticated version of the old ransom notes featured in movies that were formed by pasting together letters cut from newspapers. I would not suggest that researchers deliberately manipulate

(a)

(b)

Figure 2.9 An improperly “enhanced” image. The upper one (a) is original, the lower (b) is altered. Source: Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 111, p. 88 (detail). By permission of the Master and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.

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photographs to produce entirely new readings such as this. However, some procedures for image enhancement do use much the same method to restore readings that the researchers are certain were there before the manuscript was damaged. This temptation is understandable, particularly as it is not unusual for an enhanced image to be perfectly legible on a computer screen but for this legibility to be utterly lost when the image is printed for publication. Rather than yielding to this temptation, however helpful it may seem as a means of recording one’s results, it is preferable to record the exact process of enhancement, as discussed above, and ideally to provide both original and enhanced images. If any conclusion can be drawn from this, perhaps it is that the enhancement of digital images is useful for recovering Anglo- Saxon erasures and other forms of lost readings. The tools and techniques outlined here serve a valid purpose, and they should not be dismissed wholesale because of the problems they create when misused. It is important for these problems to be properly understood, both by those carrying out the enhancement and by those using and judging the results of such techniques. And with these techniques, tools, and images all readily available, it is now possible at least in principle for all scholars of manuscripts to enhance their own images and recover their own lost readings in one further step toward greater accessibility to manuscripts and the evidence they contain.27 Notes 1. For a small sample of the literature on just one of these manuscripts and its recovery, see Roger L. Easton, Jr., Text Recovery from the Archimedes Palimpsest: An Exercise in Digital Image Processing, Rochester Institute of Technology ( July 25, 2001), http://www.cis.rit.edu/people/faculty/easton/k-12/; Roger L. Easton, Jr., and Keith T. Knox, “Digital Restoration of Erased and Damaged Manuscripts,” Proceedings of the 39th Annual Convention of the Association of Jewish Libraries, compiled by Elana Gensler and Joan Biella (New York: Association of Jewish Libraries, 2004), http://w w w.jewish librar ies.org/ajlweb/publications/proceedings/ proceedings2004.htm; Roger L. Easton, Jr., Keith T. Knox, and W.A. Christens-Barry, “Multi- Spectral Imaging of the Archimedes Palimpsest,” Proceedings of the Applied Imagery Pattern Recognition Workshop (IEEE-AIPR’03) 32 (2003): 111–16; Emanuele Salerno, Anna Tonazzini, and Luigi Bedini, “Digital Image Analysis to Enhance Underwritten Text in the Archimedes Palimpsest,” International Journal on Document Analysis and Recognition 9 (2007): 79–87; Reviel Netz and William Noel, The Archimedes Codex: Revealing the Secrets of the World’s Greatest Palimpsest (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2007).

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2. For two examples, see William Schipper, “Digitizing (Nearly) Unreadable Fragments of Cyprian’s ‘Epistolary,’ ” in The Book Unbound: Editing and Reading Medieval Manuscripts and Texts, ed. Siân Echard and Stephen Partridge (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), pp. 159–68; and Julia Craig-McFeely, “Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music: The Evolution of a Digital Resource,” Digital Medievalist 3 (2008): 90 paragraphs, http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/3/mcfeely/. 3. Neil R. Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (1957; reissued with suppl. Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), p. lxii, referring to Vatican City, BAV Reg. Lat. 497, fol. 71 (his no. 391). The contribution by Paul E. Szarmach in this volume brief ly discusses this manuscript. 4. E.A. Lowe, “Codices Rescripti: A List of the Oldest Latin Palimpsests with Stray Observations on their Origin,” in Mélanges Eugène Tisserant, vol. 5 (Vatican: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1964), pp. 72 and 76, n. 13, and nos. 10, 23, 35, and 64. The rejection is Durham, Cathedral Library A. ii. 16, fols. 1–23, 34–86 and 102 + Cambridge, Magdalene College, Pepys 2981 (18); part of this manuscript was erased but rewritten by the same scribe; E.A. Lowe, Codices Latini Antiquiores: A Palaeographical Guide to Latin Manuscripts Prior to the Ninth Century, vol. 2 (1935; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), no. 148a. For further discussion of Anglo- Saxon palimpsests, see also Papahagi’s and Szarmach’s contributions to this volume. 5. See especially Szarmach’s contribution to this volume. 6. For some of these, see Ker, Catalogue, nos. 6a; 35, 1–3 + 8; 119b; 126; 147a; 185f; 194 (but see below); 249a, f; 291d (largely illegible but not necessarily erased); 370b–c. Ker’s no. 194 is BL Cotton Tiberius B. v, vol. 1, fol. 75: this was described by Ker as containing records added in blank spaces (p. 256), but was listed as a palimpsest by Lowe, “Codices Rescripti,” no. 35. Lowe later described the page in more detail, noting that it has documentary additions both in space originally left blank and also on erased portions of text: Lowe, CLA 2, no. 190. The page was not described or illustrated in Patrick McGurk, ed. An Eleventh-Century Anglo-Saxon Illustrated Miscellany: British Library Cotton Tiberius B. V Part I Together with Leaves from British Library Cotton Nero D. II. EEMF 21 (1993), because it was added by Sir Robert Cotton presumably early in the seventeenth century. 7. A complete digital facsimile of CCCC 422 is available at Parker on the Web, Stanford University, http://parkerweb.stanford.edu, and photographs of the face and dorse of BL Cotton Augustus ii. 6 as Keynes no. 208. For a reading of the dorse recovered by the techniques described in this essay see Peter A. Stokes, “King Edgar’s Charter for Pershore (AD 972)”, AngloSaxon England 37 (2008): 31–78, at pp. 66–67. 8. For example, see many of the rubrics in the so- called Red Book of Darley, now CCCC 422, pp. 26–586. See Mildred Budny, Insular, Anglo-Saxon, and Early Anglo-Norman Manuscript Art at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge: An Illustrated Catalogue, vol. 1 (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1997), pp. 650–51 (no. 44) and note 7, above.

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9. The Cotton collection now holds 123 distinct items from Anglo- Saxon England, of which ninety-nine contain material in Old English. The next largest collection in both regards is that of Corpus Christi, Cambridge, which holds eighty-four and fifty-three items, respectively. These counts are based on my own data compiled from Helmut Gneuss, Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A List of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 241 (Tempe, AZ: ACMRS, 2001) and Ker’s Catalogue; for a discussion of the method involved and the assumptions underlying it, see Peter A. Stokes, English Vernacular Script, c.990–c.1035 (PhD dissertation, University of Cambridge, 2006), 1:3–4. Compare also Ker, Catalogue, p. liv for a list of manuscripts and membra disiecta, which Cotton owned and which contain Old English. 10. Andrew Prescott, “ ‘Their Present Miserable State of Cremation’: The Restoration of the Cotton Library,” in Sir Robert Cotton as Collector: Essays on an Early Stuart Courtier and His Legacy, ed. C.J. Wright (London: British Library, 1997), pp. 391–454. 11. For details of this project see Rinascimento Virtuale – Digitale Palimpsestforschung – Rediscovering Written Records of a Hidden European Cultural Heritage, http://www.rinascimentovirtuale.eu/. 12. Craig-McFeely, “Digital Image Archive: Evolution,” §§13–47; Julia Craig-McFeely and Alan Lock, “Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music: Digital Restoration Workbook,” Oxford Select Specialist Catalogue Publications (2006), http://www.methodsnetwork.ac.uk/ redist/pdf/workbook1.pdf, pp. 12–16. 13. The most obvious consequence of this difference is that our perception of a printed page changes significantly in different light, whereas that of a computer monitor is much less affected. To take an extreme example, if a room is completely dark, a computer monitor can still be seen, whereas a printed page is entirely invisible. For a further consequence, the difference between additive and subtractive color mixing, see note 16 below. 14. For a brief overview, see Craig-McFeely and Lock, “Digital Image Archive: Workbook,” pp. 12–15, and, for more detailed discussion, Melissa Terras, Digital Images for the Information Professional (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), pp. 61–98. 15 The system described here is known as “8-bit color” and is the most common of several possibilities. For others see Terras, Digital Imaging, pp. 44–49. 16. It should be noted that the type of mixing here, namely mixing light, is additive, as discussed above in note 13. The results are therefore quite different from those obtained by mixing paint, which is subtractive, and where the primary colors are red, yellow, and blue rather than red, green, and blue. 17. “Adobe” and “Photoshop” are registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries.

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18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

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Adobe Photoshop CS is hereafter referred to as Photoshop. GIMP is copyright under the GNU General Public Licence (GPL): see Michael Natterer, Sven Neumann, et al. GIMP: GNU Image Manipulation Program (2008), http://www.gimp.org. “GNU General Public Licence,” GNU Operating System, Free Software Foundation ( June 29, 2007), http://www.gnu.org/licenses/ gpl.html. For one method of performing such calculations, see Easton, slides 32–43, and for a more complex approach, see Salerno, Tonazzini, and Bedini, “Digital Image Analysis,” pp. 79–87. “Colors” is a primary menu in the GIMP version 2.4. In earlier versions it was a submenu under “Layers,” but the “Decompose” function was in the “Color Filters” submenu of the “Filters” menu. Both “Blur” and “Despeckle” are available under the “Filters” menu in both Photoshop and the GIMP. “Despeckle” is under the “Noise” submenu in Photoshop and the “Enhance” submenu in GIMP. For further details, see Craig-McFeely and Lock, “Digital Image Archive: Workbook,” pp. 32–34 and 48–64. This functionality is not unique to Photoshop, but is also available in GIMP, pace Craig-McFeely and Lock, “Digital Image Archive: Workbook,” p. 32. At the time of writing, the prototype implements channel manipulation, “Level Adjust” (both manual and automatic), rotation and ref lection, a 3×3 convolve filter (which includes a “Blur” facility), thresholding (both manual and various types of automatic), invert, and zoom. All functionality was implemented using the Java Advanced Imaging ( JAI) library. Java is a trademark or registered trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc., or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. See Java.com and “Java Advanced Imaging ( JAI) API,” Sun Development Network (2008), Sun Microsystems, http://java.sun.com/javase/technologies/ desktop/media/jai/. The software is still in early stages of development but has been made available online under a Creative Commons license as part of the “Hand Analyser” Project on SourceForge, http://sourceforge. net/projects/handanalyser/. Please note that the JAI Library must be downloaded separately and installed prior to running the Image Viewer software. The standard is ANSI/NISO Z39.87-2006, for which see National Standards Organization, Data Dictionary: Technical Metadata for Digital Still Images, National Standards Organization (2006), http://www.niso.org/ kst/reports/standards/, keyword: Z39.87; §10 applies to image processing. The standard has been implemented in XML by the Library of Congress as the MIX schema, which is in turn often used as an extension of the METS standard for technical and administrative metadata. See MIX: NISO Metadata for Images in XML Schema, Library of Congress (May 13, 2008), http://www.loc.gov/standards/mix/, and METS: Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard Official Website, Library of Congress,

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http://www.loc.gov/standards/mets/. I thank Elena Pierazzo for drawing my attention to these. 25. Craig-McFeely, “Digital Image Archive: Evolution,” §51; compare the techniques listed by Craig-McFeely and Lock, “Digital Image Archive: Workbook,” 38–50, almost all of which are labor intensive and apply to only parts of an image at a time, which must be selected by the user and which cannot be precisely reproduced without an unreasonable amount of effort on the part of both the person doing the initial enhancement and the ones trying to reproduce it. 26. Craig-McFeely, “Digital Image Archive: Evolution,” §62; compare also Craig-McFeely and Lock, “Digital Image Archive: Workbook,” pp. 35–36 and 53–54. 27. I wish to thank the Cambridge Newton Trust and the Leverhulme Trust for their financial support, without which this research would not have been possible.

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CHAPTER 3 SOME PSALTER GLOSSES IN THEIR IMMEDIATE CONTEXT Jane Roberts

This essay looks closely at three Anglo-Saxon glossed psalters and how the palimpsestic layers of gloss and text, language and layout, speak to the meditative reader. Introduction: The Psalters Glossed in Old English Over the past few years I have become obsessed by speculation as to just what Anglo-Saxons thought they were up to when they added vernacular glosses to some of their finest and oldest manuscripts. From our perspective, Aldred’s thick encrusting of the Lindisfarne Gospels with English words and phrases is shocking,1 unless we adopt the point of view that he has thereby given us the first gospel books in English (the incidental benefits to language historians were hardly in his mind).2 The gloss to the Lindisfarne Gospels, written in 950–970, is as intrusive as the Vespasian Psalter gloss written a century or so earlier. In both cases the glosses were added to great books that had, as far as we can tell, long been prized among altar furnishings, and the same must have been true of the Macregol Gospels (alternatively named the Rushworth or Birr Gospels), however that Irish book got to England. The first glossed psalters extant from Anglo-Saxon England have ninth- century glossing. Earliest perhaps is the scattering of glosses in red ink added to the eighth-century Blickling Psalter.3 The fuller cover given in the ninth-century glossing of another eighth-century book, the Vespasian Psalter, has led to its being

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commonly regarded as the first of the psalters substantially glossed in Old English.4 Preliminary investigation leads me to believe that supplying psalters with vernacular glosses on the page is a practice first seen in ninthcentury manuscripts in areas where Romance languages did not have a hold. The absence of earlier on-the-page glossing may be seen as supporting Alfred’s lament that back in the good old days the English had no need for books to be translated “into their own language.” If this was so in Britain, was it so also elsewhere in western Europe? Ireland and Germanic-speaking areas on the continent also had psalters glossed in their vernaculars, and I should like to know from when and to what degree. In all, some 40 percent of the psalters extant from Anglo- Saxon England are glossed psalters, a surprisingly high proportion, with the greatest number surviving from the eleventh century.5 The number overall is small, fifteen at a conservative count.6 Of these, the glosses seem for the most part not to be by the hand of the main text. Sadly, these fifteen must be a very small fraction of those that once existed,7 and there must, indeed, have been many more psalters in Anglo- Saxon England than those of which we now have knowledge. A significant development in layout is to be seen in the early tenthcentury Junius Psalter, where the handsome pages have widely spaced lines. Certainly Junius was quick to acquire an interlinear gloss, entered in a much smaller script on lines sometimes specially ruled. The main text is described by Ker as “a rather stiff square Anglo- Saxon minuscule,” and the smaller script of the gloss as possibly “by the same hand.” 8 A further development is evident in the mid tenth- century Regius Psalter, a far more scholarly package, and, in Mechthild Gretsch’s words, “unique among glossed psalters in providing an Old English gloss that matches the Latin text.” 9 Here the scribe, the writer both of the main text and of the ancillary materials, provides not just an interlinear gloss but scholia as well, for which he has made careful provision, all in “f luent square Anglo- Saxon minuscule” (again, Ker’s description).10 The scholia, taken mostly from Cassiodorus, were written before the interlinear glosses, which have had in some places to work around the signes de renvoi.11 Yet the Old English glosses are sometimes at odds with the Latin commentary material, evidence that the Regius Psalter gloss is a copy very close to an earlier vernacular gloss.12 Whereas the Junius gloss is closely related to the glosses supplied in the Vespasian Psalter, with the Regius Psalter a new source gloss is evident. The Regius Psalter is the earliest of the three glossed psalters from which I shall examine readings. Where it was written is not known; circumstantial evidence suggests Winchester, though there are early links with Worcester for

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the second extant manuscript written by its scribe, a commentary on Psalms 109–49 (London, British Library, Royal 4 A. xiv). By the eleventh century the Regius Psalter was at Christ Church, Canterbury. The psalters I have mentioned so far have Romanum texts, whereas the Salisbury Psalter, copied in the latter part of the tenth century, is the earliest of the extant glossed psalters to have a Gallican rather than Romanum text.13 This psalter was not written with glosses in mind, and the main-text scribe supplies glosses for one supplementary text only (fols. 149v–51v, the Athanasian Creed: Quicumque vult). The main-text hand is a handsome example of Anglo-Saxon square minuscule, differing markedly therefore from the essentially Caroline letter forms of its gloss, added sometime in the eleventh or twelfth centuries.14 By contrast, the late tenth-century Bosworth Psalter,15 a Romanum text with alterations throughout to Gallican readings, could be said to be half-heartedly glossed, and it should be set aside as a curate’s egg of a glossed psalter, “continuous” for twenty-five psalms and “good” in parts of four others. It is a large book, its main text in heavy square minuscule. The vernacular glosses, dated to the early eleventh century, “perhaps not much later” (Ker) than the main text, start at Ps 40.5 and are applied intermittently up to Ps 142.12. Of the eleventh-century glossed psalters, only the Winchcombe Psalter (sometimes called the Cambridge Psalter) has a Romanum text.16 The page is ruled for thirty-two lines, with English in red alternating with the Latin text in black, so that (in Ker’s words) the gloss is “given parity with the text and is not properly an interlinear gloss.” The use of alternating lines of similarly sized script for Latin and English, not otherwise seen in Anglo- Saxon psalters, is a device used also in prose paraphrases of hymns and canticles, for example, London, British Library, Cotton Vespasian D. xii, and London, British Library, Cotton Julius A. vi, except that there the English script tends to be smaller than the Latin. Although in the Winchcombe Psalter the English interpretation is similar in size to the Latin (kinder to shortsighted eyes?), the greater importance of the Latin is signaled by the setting of the initial capital for each verse out into the marginal space. The signaling of greater importance for the Latin texts is true also of the hymnals. For a more informal case of seeming parity, compare the proverbs added into three empty leaves in Durham, Cathedral Library, B. III. 32, where the English paraphrase follows in the same ink and sometimes without a line break, but again the initials given prominence are for the Latin proverbs. In the Winchcombe Psalter a first scribe wrote the opening page (fol. 5r), making distinctions in the letter forms according to language, and distinctions are made on the next two pages, but from fol. 6v such differentiation more or less lapses. From that

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point the main hand holds for the most part to the letter forms of AngloSaxon minuscule, the clearest difference being the use of the Tironian sign in English against et or the ampersand in Latin.17 The heyday for supplying Anglo-Saxon psalters with vernacular glosses was the eleventh century. Apart from the eccentric Winchcombe Psalter, all are Gallican psalters, the service book of the Carolingian church. Of the six eleventh-century glossed Gallican psalters, one, the Lambeth Psalter,18 is from early in the century, four are dated to the middle of the century (Stowe, Vitellius, Tiberius, and a destroyed psalter represented by three fragments),19 and the Arundel Psalter (Arundel 60) to the latter part of the century.20 At this point the tradition of psalters with interlinear English glosses effectively ceases. English plays a minor role within the lavish display of the Eadwine Psalter,21 relegated to accompanying the Romanum text alongside the Anglo-Norman gloss supplied above the Hebraicum,22 and the last gasp of the Old English glossed psalter is a splendid manuscript in Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, lat. 8846, where a very few scattered glosses above the opening words of Pss 59, 64, 77, and 87 ref lect the readings of the Eadwine Psalter.23 The other “Paris Psalter” (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, lat. 8824),24 also from the middle of the eleventh century, is a dual-language book, with Latin and English in parallel columns, not a glossed psalter, but I mention it because it too is eccentric for its century in having the Romanum rather than Gallican text. The following table summarizes a few details of layout for all but the last two glossed psalters; R = Romanum, and G = Gallicanum. The dates indicate the making of the main text, and the psalters are ordered according to depth of writing space rather than overall size, which has suffered greater alteration across time:25

R R R G G G G G G R R R G

MS Date

Name

Written Space

Page Size

x 2/x ex. xi med. viii med. xi 2 x2 xi med. xi med. xi med. xi med.26 x med. x in. viii1 xi1

Bosworth Winchcombe Blickling Arundel 60 Salisbury Stowe Tiberius [fragmentary] Vitellius Regius Junius Vespasian Lambeth

310 x 185 250 x 113 235 x 160–165 235 x 120 234 x 105 227 x 117 216 x 111 210 x c.140 ?c.205 x 120 202 x 105 185 x 110 177 x 138 166 x 111

390 x 265 c.270 x 113 300–305 x 225–230 c.300 x 197 c.287 x 180 278 x 180 c.250 x 150 ?c.300 x 180–90 ?? 270 x 185 c.243 x 170 235 x 180 212 x 158

Lines 25 32 24 24 24 20 25 ? 26 19 20 22 16

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The psalters listed above are all written in long lines, not columns. Of them, the Lambeth Psalter is smallest. At that, it comes as a shock to realize that the next smallest is the Vespasian Psalter, acknowledged as a treasured book displayed on the high altar in St. Augustine’s Canterbury in the fifteenth century. The Lambeth Psalter, a small book, was not ruled to receive glosses, but both glosses and construe marks are so carefully entered so as not to seem out of place. The last two glossed psalters, the Eadwine Psalter and Paris 8846, both omitted from this table, are very different: large in format and complex in layout, they belong to a world in which page design has become “professionalized” and the packaging of information a far more serious business. By this time, psalters have diversified into many shapes and layouts—whether in the elaborately framed markup of the glossa ordinaria, or in separate large choir books, or in the new small “pocket” bibles that swept the field for scholarly consultation.27 In addition, the individual psalter for meditative use faced competition at one end of the spectrum from the compendious missal,28 at the other from the Book of Hours. As for interlinear vernacular glossing in English, it had retreated downmarket (there was now, of course, a rapidly growing market in bookmaking); there is in the twelfth century little evidence for English being used to mark other than occasional equivalences in new teaching materials, where interlinear vernacular glossing was primarily in French.29

First Sample Verse I shall now limit myself to two verses in three Anglo-Saxon psalters. There is an element of randomness in my sample (I am intrigued by curious forms in two verses in some of these psalters). Three of the pages chosen have uninterrupted text (Regius, fol. 24v; Vitellius, fol. 29r; and Lambeth, fol. 24r), and they happen to contain Ps 17.46. Three give a miseen-page that shows the beginning of Ps 13.1 (Regius, fol. 18r; Vitellius, fol. 25r; and Lambeth, fol. 17r). Perhaps it is my good luck rather than random chance that the samples are from the first fifty psalms, for which we now have Phillip Pulsiano’s full analysis of glosses.30 The pleasing layout of the Regius Psalter deserves to be better known. Here there is plenty of space, a larger format indeed than the Vespasian Psalter. One scribe designed a page meant from the outset to contain marginal scholia and with plenty of room for interlinear glosses, too. The otherwise unattested frequentative verb *huncettan was one of the things that drew my attention to the first sample verse, Ps 17.46. 31 According to Pulsiano, it is distinctive of psalter glosses in the Regius tradition as

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opposed to those related to the Vespasian tradition.32 As an infrequent word, “huncetton” is certainly distinctive: bearn fremedu lugun

Filii alieni mentiti s(un)t .,

.,

me eald[- e\o]don .i. in malitiis suis mihi filii alieni inueterauerunt hy healtodon ɫ huncetton fra(m) siðfatu(m) heora

et claudicauer(un)t a semitis suis :· Regius Psalter, fol. 24v, lines 15–17.

The resemblance of “huncetton” to forms recorded in the same verse in two later glossed psalters is undeniable. In Ps 17.46, the Lambeth Psalter reads “luncodon”: fram stigum synum ɫ fram heora paðum

þeoda

gentium ; / a semitis suis ; folc

þ(æt) þe ic ne oncneow ðeowde

Populus quem non cognoui seruiuit me on gehyrnesse earen hit gehyrsumode me

.,

mihi in auditu auris oboediuit mihi ; bearn ælfremede ɫ ælðeodisce alugon me bearn

.,

Filii alieni mentiti sunt mihi filii ali elelendisce forealdodon ahealtedon luncodon

eni inueterati sunt . et claudicauer(unt) Lambeth Psalter, fol. 24r, lines 7–11.

Here the final phrase “a semitis suis” has been stashed away in handy space higher up on the page, at the end of verse 44 (line 7). The glossator may at first have been puzzled, his signe de renvoi in line 11 suggesting that he thought something like “suis præuitatib|” was missing. Noteworthy also is the possessive adjective form above “suis,” 33 one of only two verses in which sin occurs in the glossed psalters.34 Here the fire- damaged Vitellius Psalter has a different gloss above suis, which is tucked into space two lines above at the end of a line. The first s is possibly disturbed, though on balance I think not: þinum

/ suis . bearn fremde lugon ∙ ɫ leogende wæron me bearn fremde

.,

Filii alieni mentiti sunt mihi filii alieni hi healtodon ∙ ɫ hlyncoton fram siðfatu(m) ∙ɫ st[-|

ealdedon synd

.,

inueterati sunt & claudicauerunt a semitis Vitellius Psalter, fol. 29r, lines 12–14

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At first sight, “þinum” looks like a mistranslation, but it is paralleled in Arundel 60, fol. 23r, where in the phrase “a semitis suis,” the first s of “suis” is altered from t, a reading that could have led to the gloss “þinu(m)” if not first in this psalter, in some earlier psalter.35 Did some scribe somewhere along the long chain of transmission remember the phrase Ps. 16.5 “a semitis tuis” and first write “tuis” here?36 It might almost be argued that the Lambeth “synum” is a rationalization of thine forms, were it not that sin occurs in another Lambeth Psalter gloss. As for the glossing of claudicare, behind the verb forms linked to healtian in the Lambeth and Vitellius Psalters we may glimpse a weak verb *hincian, “to limp, be lame,” cognate with the Regius form “huncetton.”37 The readiness of glossators to pick among the glosses available to them, to alter, omit, and to supplement, is well known.38 From the sparse evidence it looks as if the Regius Psalter form “huncetton” links a more colloquial verb *huncettan to healtian, a colloquialism leaving its trace in the mangled readings of Vitellius (with intrusive -l-)39 and Lambeth (with lu- for hi-).

Second Sample Verse The second sample verse, Ps. 13.1,40 allows us to glimpse the sort of information given at the beginning of a psalm. In the Regius Psalter, fol. 18r, there is no script differentiation for the heading, which, nevertheless, stands out because it is in red ink: :∙ minime credider(un)t Increpat eccl(esi)a iudeos q(u)i uiso cr(ist)o cwæð se unwisa on heortan his

DIXit insipiens in corde suo ∙i∙ incarnatus ∙i∙ peccatores

hy g(e)wemmede synt on

non e(st) d(eu)s . corrupti s(un)t et ab ∙i∙ errorib(us) pleni sceonge\n/lice hy g(e)wordene synt on willu(m) hominabiles facti s(un)t in uolun heora

nis

þe dó

tatibus suis ∙ Non est qui fa oð

on anne

ciat bonu(m) . non est usq(ue) ad unu(m) :∙ Regius Psalter, fol. 18r, lines 15–19.

Smaller format differentiates the glosses from main text, but the attempt to position Latin explanations above vernacular forms is not clear- cut, as

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this transcription suggests. The Vitellius layout pays greater attention to script hierarchy, and the lesser amount of abbreviation of its text, where the only abbreviation in these few lines is the “D(EU)S,” a conventional use of one of the customary nomina sacra forms, indicates greater formality than in the Regius Psalter. The rubricated display heading in Vitellius is now hard to read.41 It is followed by a row of narrow capitals:42 ·XIII· I N*** D(AUI)D UERBA CR(IST)I AD DIUITE(M) INTERROGANS SE DE POPULO SUO.

cwæð

unwis

on heortan his

ne is god

.,

DIXIT INSIPIENS IN CORDE SUO NON EST D(EU)S gewemde syndon

onscunigendlic

Corrupti sunt & abhominabiles gewordene syndon on lustum heora ne is se ðe do

.,

facti sunt in studiis suis god

ne is

.,

bonum

non est qui faciat

oð ænne

non est usque ad unum

Vitellius Psalter, fol. 25r, lines 2–7.

The Lambeth Psalter may be the smallest of all the psalters with Old English glosses, but it has claims to being the most scholarly text. The scrupulous marking of words by obelus (÷) and asterisk (*) suggests the use of a Hebraicum psalter,43 and the glosses often relate to Romanum readings. With the Lambeth Psalter, firm red display script makes the move from one psalm to another stand out clearly. Note also in green ink the typological reminder that the psalm may be read as the words of Christ, just below a cropped marginal explication of the figural reading. The spacing available for the glosses is cleverly deployed: note how the first part of the gloss for “Dixit” is tucked inside the initial and the second part of the gloss for “insipiens” is added out in the right-hand margin; again, good use is made of the space below that last line of main text alongside the gloss for the overrun “d(eu)m.” XIII IN FINEM PSALMUS D(AUI)D ∙ sæde ɫ cwæð se unsnotera ɫ se unwita on heortan his nys god

.,

Dixit insipiens in corde suo

non est d(eu)s

gewemmede hi syndon asceonigendlic ɫ gehyspendlic gewordene

Corrupti sunt & ab[-]ominabiles facti hy synt on ymbhigdinyssum sinum nys na se þe do ɫ gefremme

.,

sunt in studiis ÷suis : god

nys na

oð

non est qui faciat to anum

bonu(m) ÷non est: usque ad unum ; Lambeth Psalter, fol. 17r, lines 10–14. Cf. Figure 3.1.

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Figure 3.1 London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 427 (Lambeth Psalter), fol. 17r. Source: Courtesy of the trustees of Lambeth Palace Library.

The glossator, an independent and justly praised interpreter of the Latin, writes “sinum” above “suis,” using the possessive adjective rather than the pronoun heora. Oddly, sin appears neither in Alfredian prose nor in the writings of Ælfric,44 although it is recorded twice in the laws from the early Kentish kingdoms,45 and it occurs frequently in Old English poetry, being, according to Mitchell, “spasmodic” in poetry of all periods.46 The latest poem in which it is found is the “Death of Edward” in the AngloTatjana Silec

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Saxon Chronicle annal for 1065,47 and sin is found otherwise only in the tenth-century glosses of Aldred of Chester-le-Street.48 It is worth note that the accompanying noun, ymbhygdnes, well attested in late West Saxon,49 also makes its only appearance among the psalter glosses. Conclusion: Back to the Main Texts To finish, I should like to return to the question of just what the glossators thought they were up to. Old English glosses have, in recent years, drawn the attention of scholars interested in the history of translation. Evert Wiesenekker, for example, sets up a complex “Lexical Selection Scheme” by which “to investigate the working methods of some of the best glossators, highlighting the more successful and attractive achievements in their work,”50 and he argues that that “in terms of modern textbooks for students, Vespasian, in its habitual use of ‘the same equivalent for the same lemma’, may claim to be one for ‘beginners’, Regius and Lambeth definitely for ‘advanced students’.”51 In a later paper he examines the glossator’s lexis in the Junius Psalter, showing how the choices made often improve on and “tend towards greater naturalness” than those found in the Vespasian Psalter.52 Robert Stanton, drawing on Wiesenekker’s work, also sees in traditions of glossing “a fundamental starting point for the study of translation theory and practice.”53 Whereas Wiesenekker’s investigation, focused particularly on lexical choice, is reliant on the standard editions of the Vespasian, Regius, and Lambeth psalters, Stanton, widening his approach to include consideration of manuscript layout, seeks to explain the ways in which the “full interlinear gloss borders most closely on the domain of continuous prose translation.”54 He makes interesting observations about the mise-en-page of five psalters, Junius, Regius, Salisbury, Winchcombe, and Arundel 60, for each of which he gives a full-page illustration. First, he states something so basic that it is too often taken for granted, that full interlinear glosses have a continuity that occasional glosses lack. Second, he observes that where Old English fills a preset gloss area between the lines, full interpretive coverage is obvious. His third point, that there is not always a hierarchy of scripts to distinguish text and gloss, is interrelated to his fourth point, that the vernacular gloss is not always subservient “in degree of subordination,” where he notes in particular the unusual layout of the Winchcombe Psalter. Now it seems to me that the question of hierarchy of scripts is relevant only if the glosses are part of the makeup of the original psalter. Of the three manuscripts at which we have been looking, this is most clearly the case with the Regius Psalter, where a single scribe left adequate room, sometimes ruled, for

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entering glosses after the text itself and its scholia were written. These interlinear glosses are for the most part English, although they are sometimes accompanied by Latin explanations, which, like the scholia, are not included in the standard edition.55 There was indeed sufficient room for these interlinear Latin notes to be entered neatly above the English glosses, although they are not always so deployed. By contrast, the main scribe of the Vitellius Psalter, which, before suffering in the 1731 fire at Ashburnham House, must have been rather a fine volume, observes his own chosen hierarchies, and these are to a great extent obscured by the damage imposed both by shrinkage and by the glossator; the gloss is near in time to, but probably by a hand other than, the main scribe. We have been looking at sample glosses in three psalter manuscripts, all of which have fairly uninterrupted interlinear vernacular coverage. Regius is exceptional for the thoughtfulness with which it was designed. This scribe was also responsible for a psalter commentary, London, British Library, Royal 4 A. xiv (at Worcester perhaps as early as the twelfth century), so behind these two manuscripts lies a scholarly interest in psalter studies. At Ps 17.51 this glossator, in response to the phrase “christo suo,” notes two otherwise unknown lines of Old English poetry: “Wæs mid Iudeum on geardagum ealra cyninga gehwelc Cristus nemned,” together with the explanation “omnis rex in antiquis diebus aput iudeos nominabatur christus.” Strikingly, psalter and vernacular poetry are here in direct collision. The English poetry written down in the tenth century has its origins in religious centers where the psalter, canticles, and round of prayer were followed daily. Just as the psalter’s verses help structure and punctuate the lives of saints—say, Bede’s telling of the stories of Cuthbert, Chad, Audrey, etc.—so too they lend narrative strategies and phrases to the vernacular poems, which in their turn respond to meditative reading, just as do the psalms themselves. The origin of the Regius Psalter is unknown.56 The invocation of Machutus and Eadburga in a prayer added early in the eleventh century to fol. 1 has prompted circumstantial attribution to Winchester,57 and its gloss is thought to have originated in the 940s “among the new Benedictine élite which had assembled at Glastonbury,” with Æthelwold playing a part in its production.58 Pen trials and drafting notes at the end of its final quire show that it was at Christ Church, Canterbury, already in the early eleventh century.59 We sometimes forget that books are highly portable objects. The very usefulness of this particular psalter led to the updating of some main-text readings late in the eleventh century, together with the erasure of the Old English gloss that stood above the Latin. These changes were designed to bring the Romanum text more in line with Gallicanum readings.60 Does

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.,

their palimpsestic intrusion indicate that the psalter itself together with its scholia was already valued more greatly than the interlinear glossing? It is worth noting that the Salisbury Psalter continued in use probably longer than its glosses,61 suggesting that well-laid-out manuscripts in AngloSaxon minuscule continued to be read long after the script’s main period of production. With the Vitellius Psalter, there seems not to have been sufficient room left between the lines for a vernacular gloss to be entered comfortably. If we compare just the opening of Ps 13 in these three psalters, we gain some idea of their glossators’ ambition. The Vitellius gloss makes do with equivalences: “Cwæð unwis on heortan his ne is god gewemde syndon onscunigendlic gewordene syndon on lustum heora ne is se ðe do god ne is oð ænne.” The Regius Psalter scribe, where space was left for a vernacular gloss, thinks in phrases: “Cwæð se unwisa on heortan his hy gewemmede synt onsceongenlice hy gewordene synt on willum heora nis þe do oð on anne.” With the little Lambeth Psalter, a perfectionist got to work, eager to pack as much information as possible into a by no means lavish layout. Patrick O’Neill has suggested that the Lambeth Psalter is remarkable for supplying us with what is in effect a vernacular prose psalter as well as the psalter glossed,62 and if we follow the construe marks, we can read the English version here as follows: “sæde (oððe) cwæð se unsnotera (oððe) se unwita on his heortan; nys god [.] hi syndon gewemmede hy synt gewordene asceonigendlic (oððe) gehyspendlic on sinum ymbhigdinyssum nys na se þe do (oððe) gefremme god nys na oð to anum.”63 The Anglo- Saxon glossed psalters are often described as “basic educational tools,” but we need to look at them more carefully and to consider how very different they are from one another. The psalms of David permeate the writings the Anglo- Saxons have left us, an inextricable palimpsestic base, easily identified when a hagiographic episode is punctuated by the chanting of a key verse, less surely recognized in well-worn phrases, similes, and metaphors that gain potency from their origins in the services that filled the eight daily hours of religious life. Too often those of us who specialize in Old English view the glossed psalters from a limited angle, poking and prodding English words and structures with scarcely a glance at the actual Latin context from which they derive.64 Particularly, we compartmentalize the psalters and their vernacular trappings, giving little attention to manuscript layout and forms.65 In a scholarly facsimile the “language stint” may be assigned to someone other than the overall editor, who is generally a paleographer of note.66 In an edition, the language expert makes do with a photograph, maybe a couple, referring the reader to a fuller

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paleographic description available elsewhere.67 This standoff is changing as a result of the research put in hand by Phill Pulsiano and Nick Doane.68 We now have microfiche reproductions of some Anglo-Saxon psalters accompanied by reliable accounts of the manuscripts. The images, old stock, may not be up to modern digital standards, but they serve well alongside the occasional photographs that have been published as a guide to overall appearance. More and more, I have a sense of unease in relation to manuscripts glossed in Old English, because for a long time I took to them my wish to decipher and make some sort of sense of puzzling out Old English word meanings without giving sufficient time to their physical context. Then, as a counterbalance to work for the Historical Thesaurus of English project,69 I gladly seized the opportunity of joining Julian Brown in Manuscript Studies graduate seminars for students of Old and Middle English at the University of London, eager to reconnect with the words in their proper contexts. Reading a single manuscript page slowly and scrupulously, whether in such seminars or for establishing well-edited texts, has the potential to yield serendipitous discoveries. A ghost word slain here, a form adjusted there:70 such finds, though fortuitous, indicate the need to return to the manuscripts, not just to confront the variety of information revealed by the glossed pages, but also to engage with the many clues the accumulation of additions and changes left to their meditative readers. Notes 1. In Andrew Prescott’s terms, “every manuscript is a palimpsest,” with all added written materials to be regarded as part of continued use. See his “What’s in a Number? The Physical Organization of the Manuscript Collections of the British Library,” in Beatus Vir: Studies in Early English and Norse Manuscripts In Memory of Phillip Pulsiano, ed. A.N. Doane and Kirsten Wolf, MRTS 319 (Tempe, AZ: ACMRS, 2006), p. 471 [471–525]. 2. See, for example, Michelle P. Brown, The Lindisfarne Gospels: Society, Spirituality, and the Scribe (London: British Library, 2003), p. 7: “the earliest surviving translation of the Gospels into the English language.” Aldred saw himself as the fourth of the makers of the Lindisfarne Gospels; see Jane Roberts, “Aldred Signs Off from Glossing the Lindisfarne Gospels,” in Scribes and Texts in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Alexander Rumble (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2006), pp. 28–43. 3. New York, Pierpont Morgan Library 776. These glosses are printed, together with the second later campaign of glossing, by Phillip Pulsiano, Old English Glossed Psalters: Psalms 1–50, Toronto Old English series 11 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), p. xxxvii, who dates the older series to the late eighth or early ninth century. But N.R. Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (1957; reissued with

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4.

5.

6.

7.

8. 9. 10. 11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

suppl. Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), no. 287, dates the pointed glosses to the ninth century and the square minuscule glosses to the tenth; compare E.A. Lowe, Codices Latini Antiquiores, 11 vols. plus supplement (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934–72), XI, 1661. London, British Library, Cotton Vespasian A. i: Ker, Catalogue, no. 203. The Blickling and Vespasian psalters are two of the five eighth- century English psalters whose readings are recorded in Weber, Robert, ed. Le Psautier romain et les autres anciens psautiers latins (Rome: Abbaye SaintJérôme and Libreria Vaticana, 1953). Of the psalters mentioned later in this essay, Weber also uses Winchcombe, Bosworth, and the Romanum text of the Eadwine Psalter in his footnotes. See Mechthild Gretsch, “The Junius Psalter Gloss: Its Historical and Cultural Context,” ASE 29 (2000): 87 [85–121], for twelve psalters “glossed continuously or in substantial parts” as “some forty- one per cent” of extant Anglo- Saxon psalters. The sigla for glossed psalters listed by Phillip Pulsiano, “Psalters,” in Pfaff, ed., Liturgical Books, p. 70 [61–85], use sixteen letters, but include Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, lat. 8824. More recently, Pulsiano, Old English Glossed Psalters, supplies a fuller listing and labeling of the psalters of Anglo- Saxon England. For this point, see Celia Sisam and Kenneth Sisam, eds., The Salisbury Psalter, EETS o.s. 242 (1959), p. 75: “[W]e must reckon the English glossed psalters of the tenth and eleventh centuries in hundreds.” Oxford, Bodleian Library, Junius 27: see Ker, Catalogue, no. 335. Mechthild Gretsch, The Intellectual Foundations of the English Benedictine Reform (Cambridge: University Press, 1999), p. 285. London, British Library, Royal 2 B. v: see Ker, Catalogue, no. 249. William Davey, “The Commentary of the Regius Psalter: Its Main Source and Inf luence on the Old English Gloss,” Mediaeval Studies 49 (1987): 350 [335–51]. Sisam and Sisam, eds., Salisbury Psalter, p. 55. See also Mechthild Gretsch, “The Roman Psalter, Its Old English Gloss and the Benedictine Reform,” in The Liturgy of the Late Anglo-Saxon Church, ed. Helen Gittos and M. Bradford Bedingfield. Henry Bradshaw Society Subsidia 5 (London: Henry Bradshaw Society, 2005), p. 19. Salisbury, Cathedral 150: Ker, Catalogue, no. 379. It should be remembered that the early Irish missionaries used the Gallican text, which was therefore the version sung in the Northumbrian church. According to Sisam and Sisam in Salisbury Psalter, §33, the use of g forms is “curious,” and they suggest that the Insular form was in the pattern gloss taken from a Romanum Psalter: at first the Caroline letter is usual, but later the Insular form is also pressed into service, apparently with no discernible rationale for distribution. London, British Library, Add. 37517; main text in a heavy square minuscule from late in the tenth century (Ker, Catalogue, no. 129). P.M.

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16.

17.

18. 19.

20. 21.

22. 23.

24. 25. 26.

27.

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Korhammer, “The Origin of the Bosworth Psalter,” ASE 2 (1973): 173, points out that this is “the earliest surviving English manuscript in which all the important texts of the Benedictine Office—psalter, canticles, hymns and monastic canticles—have been placed together.” Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Ff. i. 23: Ker, Catalogue, no. 13. Gretsch, Intellectual Foundations, p. 283, reports recent reconsideration that would date this manuscript to c.1000 rather than c.1050 and place its origin in Ramsey or St. Augustine’s Canterbury, but Michelle P. Brown, Manuscripts from the Anglo-Saxon Age (London: British Library, 2007), p. 136, dates it to c.1030–50, retaining attribution to Winchcombe Abbey. Note variation in a and h, an occasional hook to the back of e, some dotting of y, f sometimes starting a little high, Caroline s only at end of line, and the calligraphically good distribution of þ and ð. London, Lambeth Palace Library 427: Ker, Catalogue, no. 280. Three are London, British Library manuscripts: Stowe 2: Ker, Catalogue, no. 271; Cotton Tiberius C. vi: Ker, Catalogue no. 199; and Cotton Vitellius E. xviii: Ker, Catalogue, no. 224. What was probably a single manuscript is represented now by Cambridge, Pembroke College 312, C nos. 1, 2: Ker, Catalogue, no. 79; Haarlem, Stadsbibliothek, 188 F. 53: N.R. Ker, “A Supplement to ‘Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing AngloSaxon,’ ” ASE 5 (1976): 122–23; and Sondershausen, Schlossmuseum, Br. 1: Helmut Gneuss, “A Newly-Found Fragment of an Anglo- Saxon Psalter,” ASE 27 (1998): 273–87. London, British Library, Arundel 60: Ker, Catalogue, no. 134. Cambridge, Trinity College, R. 17. 1: Ker, Catalogue, no. 91. For a recent account of this gloss, see Patrick P. O’Neill, “The English Version,” in Gibson, Heslop and Pfaff, eds., Eadwine Psalter, pp. 123–38. See also André Crépin, “Le ‘Psautier d’Eadwine’: l’Angleterre pluri- culturelle,” in Journée d’études anglo-normandes organisée par l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, Palais de l’Institut, 20 juin 2008, eds. André Crépin and Jean Leclant (Paris: De Boccard, 2009), pp. 139–70. See the discussion by Dominique Markey, “The Anglo-Norman Version,” in Gibson, Heslop and Pfaff, eds., Eadwine Psalter, pp. 139–56. Ker, “A Supplement,” no. 419; the glosses are edited by H. Hargreaves and C. Clark, “An Unpublished Old English Psalter- Gloss Fragment,” N&Q 210 (1965): 443–46. Ker, Catalogue, no. 367. Dating follows the conventions usual in Ker, Catalogue. Phillip Pulsiano, “The Prefatory Matter of London, British Library, Cotton Vitellius E. xviii,” in Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts and Their Heritage, ed. Phillip Pulsiano and Elaine M. Treharne (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), p. 104, dates this psalter to 1060x1062. Much useful overall information is to be found scattered throughout Christopher de Hamel, The Book: A History of the Bible (London and New York: Phaidon Press Limited, 2001).

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28. See Pfaff, ed., Liturgical Books, for an excellent overview of the earliest English service books. 29. There is no evidence for English being used to make other than occasional glosses in the twelfth century, and the glosses added to the new teaching materials of the twelfth century, where the vernacular glossing was primarily in French, include only a few English glosses (observation made on trawling through Margaret Laing, Catalogue of Sources for a Linguistic Atlas of Early Medieval England (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1993)). 30. Pulsiano, Old English Glossed Psalters. 31. “The children that are strangers have lied to me, strange children have faded away, and have halted from their paths.” 32. Phillip Pulsiano, “Defining the A-Type (Vespasian) and D-Type (Regius) Psalter- Gloss Traditions,” English Studies 72 (1991): 317 [308–72]. 33. According to Tauno F. Mustanoja, A Middle English Syntax: Part 1, Parts of Speech (Helsinki: Société Néophilologique, 1960), p. 156, sin is “a lost ref lexive” that “occurs mostly in poetry, rarely in prose, and it does not survive into ME.” There is a valuable discussion of forms and usage by Gero Bauer, “Über Vorkommen und Gebrauch von ae. sin,” Anglia 81 (1963): 323–34. 34. The usual reading in this verse is some form of the genitive plural heora (in eight of the glossed psalters), though the singular his occurs once (Salisbury); three psalters have sin in this verse (Vitellius, Arundel 60, and Lambeth). 35. The alteration in Arundel 60 is noted by Pulsiano, Old English Glossed Psalters, p. 212. 36. Pulsiano, Old English Glossed Psalters, points out that the first s of “suis” is on an erasure in the Bosworth Psalter, and that Cambridge, St. John’s College, MS 59, has the reading “tuis.” Trawling the Vetus Latina (Brepols) files yielded a further tuis reading, Bildnummer 10/56. 37. See Jane Roberts, “Some Thoughts on the Expression of ‘Crippled’ in Old English,” Essays for Joyce Hill on Her Sixtieth Birthday, ed. Mary Swan, Leeds Studies in English n.s. 37 (2006): 372–73 [365–78]. 38. “Consistency in anything is rare in the psalter-glosses,” according to Sisam and Sisam, eds., Salisbury Psalter, p. 45 n. 2. For a more recent overview of the difficulties presented by interrelationships among the glossed psalters, see Phillip Pulsiano, “A Proposal for a Collective Edition of the Old English Glossed Psalters,” in Anglo-Saxon Glossography, ed. René Derolez (Brussels: Paleis der Academiën, 1992), pp. 167–87. 39. James L. Rosier, The Vitellius Psalter (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1962), p. xxxii, notes that “hlyncoton may be an error”; he suggests (footnote p. 36) that it “is perhaps a blend of hlinian (‘to lean, bend’) and hincian (‘to limp’),” comparing the Lambeth reading luncodon, “which may be for hincodon,” and Andreas 1171 hellehinca. 40. “The fool hath said in his heart: There is no God, They are corrupt, and are become abominable in their ways: there is none that doth good, no not one.”

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41. Here I have teased out a little more than reported in Pierre Salmon, Les “Tituli Psalmorum” des manuscrits latins, Études Liturgiques 3 (Paris: Cerf, 1959), p. 56. 42. Interestingly, the Vitellius side notes are related to the headings of the dual-language Paris Psalter. See Phillip Pulsiano, “The Old English Introductions in the Vitellius Psalter,” Studia Neophilologica 63 (1991): 13–35. 43. See further Patrick O’Neill, “Latin Learning at Winchester in the Early Eleventh Century: The Evidence of the Lambeth Psalter,” ASE 20 (1991): 148–49, who points out that this ref lects the glossator’s own use of the Hebraicum. Investigation is needed of the occasional use of the obelus in the Regius Psalter, indeed of these conventional signs in Anglo- Saxon psalters more generally (for example, the manuscript page reproduced in Sisam and Sisam, eds. Salisbury Psalter, shows the use of these signs, but they seem not to be discussed). 44. Bruce Mitchell, Old English Syntax, vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), §290, explains a homiletic instance as “in a passage of almost ‘poetic’ description.” R. Morris, ed., The Blickling Homilies, EETS o.s. 58, 63, 73 (1874–80), 125.21: “& is sin hwyrfel on wilewisan geworht” / “and its circuit is wrought basket-wise”; but sinhwyrfel is more plausibly to be read as an adjective comparable with the gloss form sinhwyrfende “round” and sharing the first element seen also in the commoner sintre(n)dende and sinewealt. See Jane Roberts and Christian Kay with Lynne Grundy, eds., A Thesaurus of Old English, 2 vols., King’s College London Medieval Studies XI (1995; 2nd impr. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000); online version by Flora Edmonds, Christian Kay, Jane Roberts, Irené Wotherspoon (2005): http://libra.englang.arts.gla.ac.uk/oethesaurus/. 45. F.L. Attenborough, ed., The Laws of the Earliest Kings (Cambridge: CUP, 1922), p. 14 (Æthelberht (82) “sinne willan”) and p. 26 (Wihtred (10) “sine hyd”). The early Kentish laws are preserved in the early twelfthcentury Textus Roffensis. 46. Mitchell, Old English Syntax, 1. §290; at §291 he argues that sin is archaic and retained for metrical reasons. 47. In C and D texts: see Charles Plummer, ed., Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel, vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1892–99), pp. 194–5. 48. There is a single Lindisfarne Psalter instance in response to “discipulis” in the gospel text of John 21.14: discipulis / “sinum ambehtum,” where the Rushworth Gospels have the reading discipulis suis / “ðegnum his,” but none in the glosses to the three gospels for which he is thought to have been copying earlier glosses, an absence that may have constrained him in his meager use of the form while glossing the fourth gospel. In contrast, sin is found pervasively in a book Aldred glossed later, the Durham Ritual manuscript. 49. For example, ÆCHom I, 24 (375.140); ÆCHom I, 40 (526.55); ÆLS (Agnes) (307)]; Nic (A) (27.4.4); BoGl (Hale) P.3.5.24). These instances, cited according to the conventions established at the Dictionary of Old

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50.

51. 52.

53. 54. 55. 56.

57.

58.

59. 60. 61.

English project, may be easily found in the Toronto database: Antonette diPaolo Healey, John Price-Wilkin, and Takamichi Ariga, Dictionary of Old English Corpus on the World-Wide Web, rev. ed., Society for Early English and Norse Electronic Texts (1997; Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2000) and online by subscription at http://www.doe. utoronto.ca/. Evert Wiesenekker, “Word be worde, andgit of andgite”: Translation Performance in the Old English Interlinear Glosses of the “Vespasian,” “Regius,” and “Lambeth” Psalters (Huizen: J. Bout, 1991), p. 67. Wiesenekker,”Word be worde,” p. 124. Evert Wiesenekker, “The Vespasian and Junius Psalters Compared: Glossing or Translation?,” Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik 40 (1994): 38. Robert Stanton, The Culture of Translation in Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2002), p. 9. Stanton, Culture of Translation, p. 37. Fritz Roeder, Der altenglische Regius-Psalter, Studien zur englische Philologie 18 (Halle: Niemeyer, 1904). “Almost certainly written at Winchester in 10c,” according to Phillip Pulsiano, “Psalters,” ASMMF 2 (Binghamton, NY: CEMERS, 1994), p. 57. It is worth noting that Sisam and Sisam, in The Salisbury Psalter, §§107–109, leave the question of origin open, despite its use of some of the vocabulary distinctive of the Benedictine Rule translation and the “Winchester group.” Walter Hofstetter, “Winchester and the Standardization of Old English Vocabulary,” ASE 17 (1988): 151 [139–61], does not find the instances sufficient grounds for placing this psalter among his Group I texts, “whose vocabulary is strongly marked by Winchester usage,” but instead places it in his Group II, “which favour vocabulary which does not conform to the Winchester usage.” Ker, Catalogue, no. 249, makes this suggestion, but notes also the evidence for the manuscript’s presence at Christ Church, Canterbury, in the early eleventh century. Gretsch, “The Roman Psalter,” p. 19. Catherine Cubitt, “Archbishop Dunstan: A Prophet in Politics?,” in Myth, Rulership, Church, and Charters: Essays in Honour of Nicholas Brooks, ed. Julia Barrow and Andrew Wareham (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), pp. 158–61, surveys differing opinions on the origin of 2 B. v and argues for its acquisition “at some point” by New Minster, Winchester, where its copy of a Marian office was made. These are fully examined by Peter A. Stokes, “The Regius Psalter, Folio 198v: A Reexamination,” N&Q 252 (2007): 208–11. William J. Davey, ed., “An Edition of the Regius Psalter and Its Latin Commentary” (PhD dissertation, Ottawa, 1979), p. xxxi. Sisam and Sisam, eds., The Salisbury Psalter, §10, argue for long use of the codex, at least to the late thirteenth century, noting that “at least throughout the twelfth century, readers of English would be familiar

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62.

63.

64.

65.

66.

67. 68. 69. 70.

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with the characteristic Insular letter forms”; at §37 they also point out that “the various twelfth- century readers who worked over the Latin text appear to have ignored the gloss.” Patrick P. O’Neill, “Syntactical Glosses in the Lambeth Psalter and the Reading of the Old English Interlinear Translation as Sentences,” Scriptorium 46 (1992): 256 [250–56]; the construe marks, written later than the gloss, are in brown ink, not the black of the main text. For expansion of the abbreviation ɫ by oððe in the English context, see Sisam and Sisam, eds., Salisbury Psalter, §56; also Fred C. Robinson, “Latin for Old English in Anglo- Saxon Manuscripts,” in his The Editing of Old English (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), p. 163 [159–63], repr. from Language Form and Linguistic Variation, ed. John Anderson (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1982), pp. 395–400. Patrizia Lendinara, “Instructional Manuscripts in England: The Tenthand Eleventh- Century Codices and the Early Norman Ones,” in Form and Content of Instruction in Anglo-Saxon England in the Light of Contemporary Manuscript Evidence, ed. Patrizia Lendinara, Loredana Lazzari and Maria Amalia D’Aronco (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), p. 68 [59–113], reminds us: “Some psalters were designed for display, others for training in or performance of the liturgy, and others for private study and devotion.” See also George H. Brown, “The Psalms as the Foundation of AngloSaxon Learning,” in The Place of the Psalms in the Intellectual Culture of the Middle Ages, ed. Nancy Van Deusen (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), pp. 1–24. But see M.J. Toswell, “The late Anglo- Saxon Psalter: Ancestor of the Book of Hours?,” Florilegium 14 (1995–96): 1–24, for rewarding consideration of the layout of a group of Anglo- Saxon psalters; see also her “Anglo- Saxon Psalter Manuscripts,” Old English Newsletter 28.1 (1994): A-23–A-31. For example, in The Vespasian Psalter (B.M. Cotton Vespasian A.I), EEMF 14 (1967), D.H. Wright describes the manuscript and calls on A. Campbell for the discussion of language. Sisam and Sisam’s edition of The Salisbury Psalter is exemplary in the attention given to the whole manuscript and its vernacular glosses. For the Anglo- Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile series, see http://mendota.english.wisc.edu/~ASMMF/index.htm. See http://www2.arts.gla.ac.uk/SESLL/EngLang/thesaur/homepage.htm. As argued above, Ps 17.46 had given rise to the ghost-word *luncian (Lambeth), and adjustment resolves the parallel readings to yield the *hincian (Vitellius and Lambeth) and *huncettan (Regius).

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CHAPTER 4 THE PALIMPSEST AND OLD ENGLISH HOMILETIC COMPOSITION Paul E. Szarmach

This essay proposes that the palimpsest offers a way to understand the composition techniques of Old English homilists, notably Ælfric, Wulfstan, and the anonymous tradition.

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he invocation or citation of a metaphor or analogue in any explanation of a literary feature runs a set of risks. Arguably the most famous such analogue in the study of Old English literature, viz. John Leyerle’s interlace theory for the composition of Beowulf, gives a perfect example.1 Leyerle sought to explain narrative features of Beowulf, particularly narrative time and the unfolding of incident, by comparing those features to the interlace pattern of Insular art in manuscripts and metalwork. However effective Leyerle’s comparison might be in the classroom, scholars reacted variously at best and sharply at worst in subsequent studies. Morton W. Bloomfield pronounced, “[T]he ‘interlace’ image is not useful when applied to verbal art.”2 Recognizing the risk of such comparisons and nevertheless moving forward, in part at least in ref lective homage to Leyerle and his suggestion, I would like to propose here that the palimpsest offers a way to understand the composition techniques of Old English homilists. Some consideration of what a palimpsest is seems obligatory before the word can have application to the prose. As we shall see, a palimpsest is a rewriting and a reuse of both parchment and an idea, for all writing is a rewriting. Crucial to the analogy is the practice of writers and their scribes. Ælfric, Wulfstan, and the anonymous homiletic tradition furnish examples of how the idea of the palimpsest might be operating in their respective works. The analogy can not only help

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explain how the writers compose, but also provide a new basis for judging how they succeed in their works. Certain features of composition, e.g., the problematical paragraph or sentence, may derive from a “locational” view of its function. This locational view, one may further argue, is a form of text processing. Rather than “scissors and paste” compositions as L.G. Whitbread would have it, these works can thus be seen to have another order of complexity altogether.3 The palimpsest may also suggest links between authors and literary features that may impinge on literary history. “What is a palimpsest?” is the first of many questions to be asked. In his classic essay “Codices Rescripti,” E.A. Lowe offers the definition, “scraped” or “rubbed again,” indicating the Greek origin of the word, but yet stressing that the word can be misleading.4 Lowe is quick to observe that skins were more likely exposed to the gentle process of washing, and not to a second scraping, and that, significantly, not all erased membranes show rewriting. The palimpsest offers economic and cultural evidence, for supply and demand for vellum correlate with intellectual activity. Lower texts were often obsolescent as law and liturgy developed in different, respective directions from the originating texts. Augustine’s treatise on the psalms may ride over an erased Cicero De re publica, but Christian texts were also palimpsested. Pre-Jerome translations of the Bible yielded to the Vulgate and difficult scripts (e.g., scriptura continua) were erased, but even the Vulgate is found as the lower text much more often than the upper. Lowe’s chronological limits, ref lecting the Codices Latini Antiquiores program, keep him away from much of Anglo-Saxon England, with the exception of three copies of Bede.5 There are manuscripts containing Old English that have been subjected to palimpsesting. Vatican City, Reg. Lat. 497, fol. 71 [Ker, 391; Gneuss, 916], is a remnant of the Alfredian Orosius.6 Erased in the eleventh century to accommodate a Life of St. Gertrude, the manuscript was at Trier at that time. All of fol. 71 is erased except the greater part of some thirteen lines on fol. 71v. It is reasonable to assume an Old English text was of minimal interest to its continental environment. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 422 [Ker 70; Gneuss 110], the Red Book of Darley, is busy with rubbing, the application of reagents, and general illegibility. On page 14, the text of Solomon and Saturn has been erased and a Latin form of excommunication has been written over.7 The most controversial Old English palimpsest possibility is Kevin Kiernan’s argument that fol. 179 recto and verso of Cotton Vitellius A.xv is a palimpsest.8 Subjecting these pages to a meticulous investigation of the apparent rubbing, washing, and retouching, Kiernan concludes that on fol. 179r, the second scribe removed the former ending of the

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poem and connected a text that continued the story of Beowulf. Such “hard” evidence for the narrative structure undermined generations of interpretations and interpreters to no little consternation.9 The Kiernan theses and the resultant discussion have placed the word “palimpsest” at the center of the subject and Beowulf studies for nearly the past three decades. These preliminaries about “palimpsest” need a little more elaboration. One feature of a palimpsest can be the repositioning of the upper layer at a ninety- degree angle to the lower text. It is this feature that mitigates against Kiernan’s use of “palimpsest” to describe what he sees, but one must note immediately that Lowe does not mention this feature at all in his discussion. The famous example is the Archimedes palimpsest, where a thirteenth- century scribe replaced by erasure a tenth-century Greek text, which is the oldest surviving copy of works by Archimedes (died 212 BC).10 One page of Archimedes thus becomes two pages of prayers much as one can turn a sheet of letter- size paper, front and back, into four pages. New Haven, Beinecke Library MS 262, for example, which consists almost exclusively of palimpsest prayers, shows a fifteenth- century liturgy in Greek over a tenth- century saint’s life.11 Lowe does not remark on this ninety- degree turn in his general discussion, and the matter of positioning does not surface in Old English texts where the passages are too brief. The Beowulf text could not be rewritten at ninety degrees to its present axis without causing a jumble. In art the idea of the palimpsest moves on in another direction, which may cast some light on textual practice. Thus, Leslie Brubaker defines the word as “a work or surface with a second text or image superimposed over an effaced original,” and then applies the word to painting: “[P]alimpsests indicate either reworking of the image by the original artist or more often the repainting of the image at a later date.”12 Strictly speaking, there would be no new text superimposed. Embedded here is the idea of “reworking,” which strikes a textual note. Richard Galpin gives “erasure in art” a postmodern spin in his online article.13 In Galpin’s conception erasure takes on not a destructive meaning, but rather a creative reaction to the “lower” painting. Since a deep analysis of this striking intellectual position is beyond the scope of this essay, a brief citation of Robert Rauschenberg’s Erased de Kooning Drawing must stand as an example: Rauschenburg used forty erasers to rub out a drawing that de Kooning had given him for the purpose. Rauschenberg wanted to find out “whether a drawing could be made out of erasing.”14 These few examples from art join with textual examples to ask whether any definition of palimpsest should include the idea of layering, i.e., adding to a composition rather than merely subtracting.

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Let us see how this complex of denotations and connotations in the word might operate in Old English homiletic composition. It is appropriate to begin with Ælfric of Eynsham, the acknowledged master of Old English homilies, if not late Old English prose, who shows his personal hand in the content, layout, and design of the key manuscript that contains his work, British Library, Royal 7 C xii, fols. 4–218. [= A].15 Eliason and Clemoes discern two main scribes, a third scribe, and four other hands responsible for contemporary alterations and additions, one of which was surely Ælfric himself.16 There are later correctors than Ælfric and his contemporaries, which complicates analysis, but the nature of many alterations and similar handwriting—with all the hazards of impressionism in considering hands—point toward Ælfric’s active engagement in a manuscript that is early on in the genesis of the tradition of the text of the Catholic Homilies.17 As Eliason and Clemoes document the confirmed and possible Ælfrician changes, it is clear that for Ælfric the composition of the Catholic Homilies was a process, not an event.18 Within this authorial dynamic, the cancellation on fol. 64r4 through 64v4 takes on a special importance. This passage occurs in art. 12, the Dominica in Media Quadragesima (fols. 62–66), in the midst of the exegesis of the five loaves. There is a line drawn around the passage on fol. 64r, which forms an open rectangle that is concluded on the top of fol. 64v4, where the line continues, ultimately creating the fourth side. In the margin at the beginning of the passage is a seven-line note, somewhat trimmed, whose author could only be Ælfric: ðeos racu [bið] fullicor on ð[ære] oðre bec. 7 w[e hi] forbudon on ð[is]sere þylæs þe h[it æ]ðryt þince gyf [heo] on ægðre bec b[eo]19 [This account is more thorough in the second book, and we forbade it in this book lest it seem tedious, given that it is in the second book.]

The passage marked for excision is an aside, or so Ælfric must have seen it to be in this place, about Moses, the wandering in the desert, and his writing under God’s dictation the Pentateuch and the commandments, where the mainline exposition is on John 6.1–14 and the miracle of the loaves and fishes. True enough, Ælfric cancels, and not strictly speaking erases, and yet he achieves the partial effects of a palimpsest. He rewrites and records the rewriting. Ælfric really had no choice. The Royal manuscript is Ælfric’s personal copy text, if not something akin to “scribal galleys.” The original text must remain on the page so that the next copyist can understand what passage Ælfric’s marginal note cites and what text to look for elsewhere. Had the passage been totally erased, there would have been no point of reference. Further, the text to be excised and its

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directive authorial note suggest that this passage on Moses is a compositional unit. To our contemporary eye the passage is very much like a paragraph, coherent here as a kind of curriculum vitae for a patriarch. Such paragraph- style compositional units are a feature of Ælfric’s composition, which deserve study in their own right. Here the treatment of Moses becomes a movable text as if in a “cut and paste” operation, or, to offer another analogy, an implied palimpsest. There is one more large-scale cancellation that requires discussion. Fol. 211r, lines 3–12 contains a second ending to art. XXXVIII, IIa kalendas decembris natale sancti andreae apostoli. Clemoes infers that Ælfric wrote a homily on the gospel passage for the feast of Andrew and then added a passio.20 The scribe, perhaps confused by what Ælfric had done, allows two closing formulas with “amen” within ten lines. The scribe might have been waiting for Ælfric to tell him what to do. It was presumably Ælfric who caught or saw the double ending and drew three boxlike drawings over the passage to indicate cancellation. It requires some textual imagination to understand exactly what the scribe had done and why the second, yet ur-ending is quite where it is. Clemoes describes the textual situation as a result of “scribal inadvertence.”21 Erasure of the ten lines would have been unsightly, as on fols. 64rv, and there might not have been a clear record of the action taken to remove the second ending. If the Royal manuscript functions as an author’s working copy, Ælfric would want to keep a record of major changes. Folio 211r supports the overall theory that Ælfric originally delivered sermons and then prepared a version, with prefaces and all, to send to Archbishop Sigeric. This cancellation and the one on fol. 64rv offer the oxymoron: a present absence. In this sense the cancellations are very much like a palimpsest, erased but still there to describe and exemplify the methods of composition Ælfric follows in his Catholic Homilies. Like Ælfric, and indeed arguably more so, Wulfstan of York shows every interest in the development of his texts. N.R. Ker lists with commentary some ten manuscripts that contain Wulfstan’s handwriting, which alters, revises, and corrects the text in vernacular or in Latin.22 Ker sees “a man of letters” who seeks to improve what was written, even taking a pen in hand or perhaps looking over what a scribe has written; Wulfstan is both reviser and corrector.23 The extent and nature of the interventions mean that here only a few examples can be adduced to the topic at hand. The manuscript of major interest is BL Cotton Nero A.i, which is very busy with later alterations and additions that quite naturally complicate discussion at the empirical level. There seem to be no major excisions as in the Ælfrician Royal manuscript, though there are erasures of words or phrases that would be difficult to attribute without

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the establishment of a convincing pattern. Ker finds that Wulfstan wrote some words or lines of the text, but never states that these words are palimpsested.24 Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile 17, published to a high standard, as is to be expected from the series, does not suggest that these passages are palimpsested.25 On fol. 120r, Wulfstan writes fifty- one consecutive words in the text as if he were coeval with the scribe. On fol. 125v, Wulfstan completes a text in Latin by writing the last thirty-nine words. Perhaps personal inspection and the human eye will see the marks of erasure and layering. Here and there Wulfstan shows a fondness for the tops and bottoms of pages, where he might add or erase, as in fols. 105r, 107v, and 115v. This last features a heading, whose original was erased and a new heading overlaid. There are some long marginal erasures as on fols. 88v and 96v, whose wording is not legible, and whose responsibility is undeterminable. Of special interest is BL Cotton Vespasian A.xiv, fol. 148v, which contains an “enigmatic” Latin poem in praise of Wulfstan.26 Set down on a previously empty page evidently by Wulfstan himself, the five couplets and a triplet would appear to be an example of the “talking text,” whereby the voice, directed to the reader, celebrates Wulfstan as scribe, object of admiration, and author. For some critics the distance connecting author and persona is too close for comfort and decorum, a manifestation of authorial chutzpah, but it does make sense to hold that Wulfstan wrote—in both senses—the poem, adopting the fiction of the talking text.27 The insertion of the poem is no palimpsest strictly speaking, as all agree, though it shows Wulfstan, once again, ready to intervene in manuscripts on a consistent basis. Wulfstan’s busy authorial and scribal interactions with texts and manuscripts are evident in magno as well as in parvo. His masterpiece, the Sermo Lupi, exists in three versions with five manuscripts. In her still standard edition, Dorothy Bethurum constructs a stemma to sort out the relationships.28 The five manuscripts are: CCCC 419 (B); Bodley 343 (H); CCCC 201 (C); Hatton 113 (E); Cotton Nero A.i (I). Bethurum believes that B and H, which are the shortest witnesses, are likely the earliest. C is the revised version, and E and I are revisions of the revision. It is theoretically possible for a short version to come later in the tradition and receive additions, or for a long version to come earlier, but Bethurum views the tradition as growing rather than suffering abbreviation. While, as we have seen, Cotton Nero A.i shows Wulfstan’s own hand in action, it is not at all certain who bears the responsibility for the interventions. Bethurum notes the general problems of style and content or other issues, such as an apparent scribal importation, as in C E I, where a scribal note has become part of the main text.29 C E I have a lengthy passage on the

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humiliations the English have suffered, presented in Wulfstan’s style.30 Within this thicket of variations and possibilities, one can postulate that the layering of text onto another text is a palimpsest technique taken to a compositional level. The authorial “O” in Bethurum’s stemma is a base text that changes, here mainly in additions and expansions. Given Wulfstan’s contemporaneity and his engagement with the events of 1014 and thereabouts, this f luid attitude toward the text in hand gives Wulfstan the proper orientation to the needs of the moment. Unlike Ælfric, who had his worries about scribes and their accuracy, Wulfstan never asked—or apparently expected—scribes to be all that accurate. His busy corrections and interventions suggest very much a kind of practical or utilitarian energy behind his production. But Wulfstan’s continual altering and adding suggests a wider view of his corpus and its importance to prose composition. His work is a model for a school of prose composition, which we can call the “Wulfstan School.” As the history of Old English literature indicates, the first step in the study of Wulfstan is the attempt to determine his body of work. Napier, Jost, and Bethurum did remarkable literary excavation in trying to sort out Wulfstan proper from imitators and compilers whose methods of structuring prose pieces did as Wulfstan did, and who, in fact, took Wulfstan’s various words and passages and interwove them into a whole of their own making.31 The scholars who defined Wulfstan have not agreed on all particulars to be sure. There is the problem of dating one piece or another as well. If Wulfstan is the real benchmark, then the date of 1023—the year of his death—is something to hold on to. Behind any given text of uncertain date might be nonextant earlier texts. One can further observe that Augustine of Hippo, when he authorized holy plagiarism in De Doctrina Christiana IV.29, could not have envisioned the borrowing and taking, the mixing and matching, that this school pursued.32 No doubt unwittingly, Augustine was authorizing the palimpsest, taking a presumptive author’s point of view. Napier XXX is a classic example illustrating the methods of this Wulfstanian school. Found only in Bodleian Library Hatton 113, this Worcester text is, as Scragg describes it, “a compilation in which a few sentences of undoubted Wulfstan authorship are fitted into a remarkable patchwork of extracts from pseudo-Wulfstan and tenth-century anonymous writings.”33 Scragg offers a chart that lists some seventeen passages that make up the whole of this sermon.34 In thirteen of the passages there are sources or parallels to Wulfstan’s Institutes of Polity, Vercelli Homilies IV, IX, X, XXXI, Napier II, XXIV, XLVI, XLIX, and the poem An Exhortation to Christian Living.35 There are cross-affiliations as well: Vercelli XXI and An Exhortation, Napier XLIX and Vercelli X.36

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The multiplicity of sources and the proper identification of them as well as authorship issues have proven to comprise one of the hard-won battles of traditional scholarship. Yet the emphasis on sources and authorship stays on the surface of the text that produced those bewildered initial, scholarly reactions. There is a whole behind that surface. It is first a template, effectively the blank page of a manuscript, upon which the sermon writer layers the seventeen passages. The layering follows the order of elements preconceived, filling up the page and presenting the topics and themes of the whole. For Whitbread (as cited in note 3), the technique is “scissors and paste,” which makes for a pejorative view of the method of composition. Reading the sermon as palimpsest allows a more positive view of the composition. The assembly of sources and parallels can more easily be seen as a testimony to the composer’s range and knowledge, for the number and nature of sources and parallels suggests a writer who has command of the subject area. Crossing the prose-poetry “line” by using extant homilies and a poem is another indication of an accomplished and confident writer who is working, so to speak, from his angle to the base text. Wulfstan presents yet one more pertinent example in his literary relations. As is well known, Wulfstan receives and rewrites Ælfric’s various writings and, so to speak, chooses not to receive and rewrite his AngloSaxon source in other matters. Malcolm Godden has recently offered an authoritative reassessment of the relations between Wulfstan and Ælfric.37 Considering as well the possibilities of any direct personal contact between the two writers and the apparent coolness of Ælfric toward Wulfstan, Godden describes the textual relations visible in the correspondence between the two, particularly the “pastoral letters,” as well as tracts and homilies. Godden’s tally is a cautious count of eighteen texts, twelve of which are homilies. Questions remain, of course: are there other texts that might be brought forward that scholars have not recognized, and did Wulfstan always know that it was a text of Ælfric that he was working up? Godden has effectively opened up a field of study where the idea of authorship offers a new avenue for the literary study of Anglo- Saxon England. While imponderables will remain, one can take something of a postmodern step and observe that we do have texts at hand, wherever the authors might be. Among the texts Godden cites, two of these present an excellent example of a palimpsest relation: they are Ælfric, De Falsis Diis (Pope 21), and Wulfstan, De Falsis Dies (Bethurum XII).38 Ælfric produces a lengthy text of some 676 lines (as per Pope), nearly all of it in Ælfric’s distinctive rhythmical prose, with lines 72–161 serving as the equivalent of Bethurum XII. Pope distinguishes two parts of the homily

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on the basis of source work, viz., 1–209, which develop the themes, and 210–676, which offer exemplary stories from the Bible or from Christian literature.39 When Wulfstan saw Ælfric’s work before him, he saw a text well beyond his apparently preferred brief length. Only four of Bethurum’s homilies meet or exceed two hundred lines (Bethurum, VI, Xc, XI, XX (E I)). If not in actuality, then in analogy, Wulfstan must have drawn lines around his copy to excise segments of the text (or alternatively, perhaps, to retain them). Ælfric offers to Wulfstan something of a treasure house of sources for the archbishop’s selection. But Wulfstan does more, as Bethurum describes it. He rewrites the section he does take from Ælfric in his own style, changing the rhythms, adding intensitives and tautological compounds.40 Bethurum observes that both works seem “rather more a piece of learning than a tract addressed to a current evil. It is cool and unimpassioned compared with Wulfstan’s frequent denunciations of Germanic pagan practices . . . .”41 In this respect Wulfstan mirrors the tone of Ælfric’s work and its dispassionate treatment of any pagan threat to belief, which Pope describes as an “academic distance” from a paganism treated with “contemptuous dismissal.”42 Ælfric is the lower text from which Wulfstan fashions his upper layer. The palimpsest process exists not so much on the erased or washed pages, but rather in the abstract reaches of Wulfstan’s principles of composition. This abbreviated overview of the palimpsestical relations of Wulfstan and Ælfric brings this essay to the doorstep of contemporary theory, and specifically the work of Gérard Genette’s rich and speculative treatment of the possibilities of palimpsest.43 Genette seeks to describe transtextual relationships and how a later text recalls an earlier text. As Gerald Prince says in the foreword to Palimpsests, “[A]ny writing is a rewriting.”44 The archetypal trinity of texts is the Iliad, the Aeneid, and Joyce’s Ulysses: Homer is the hypotext and Vergil and Joyce two different hypertexts. This fundamental relation plays itself out in several different forms over the body of literature: e.g., parody, travesty, caricature, forgery, pastiche. Genette includes various sorts of word games in his rather breathless sweep. Perhaps parody might find its way into Old English (cf. Genette’s remarks on formulaic poetry) and the play of the Riddles, but the broad distinction of hypotext and hypertext functions in Old English prose where Napier XXX is a pastiche—as Genette would have it—and the forms of rewriting in Ælfric and Wulfstan combine as well with Wulfstan’s rewriting of Ælfric to mirror many aspects of Genette’s overall argument. At least for now, the more playful elements that fascinate Genette—e.g., parody, caricature, mock epic, among many others—do not come into play in the prose literature under consideration here, but ideas such as translation, excision, concision, and condensation do. By

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beginning with a close look at writers and their practices, I have sought to ground my argument in hard, empirical evidence to give the theoretical possibilities substance and potential. Denholm-Young says that the lack of palimpsests in England is a function of the abundance of sheep-breeding, which meant no shortage of writing material.45 The suggestion here is that palimpsests are as abundant as sheep: one must know where to look for them and how. Notes I would like to thank Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe for her criticisms of a draft of this essay and Richard Tarrant for several suggestions. 1. John Leyerle, “The Interlace Structure of Beowulf,” University of Toronto Quarterly 37 (1967): 1–17. 2. Morton W. Bloomfield, “ ‘Interlace’ as a Medieval Narrative Technique with Special Reference to ‘Beowulf,’ ” in Magister Regis: Studies in Honor of Robert Earl Kaske, ed. Arthur Groos with Emerson Brown, Jr., Thomas D. Hill, Giuseppe Mazzota, and Joseph S. Wittig (New York: Fordham University Press, 1986), pp. 49–59. But see Peter R. Schroeder, “Stylistic Analogies Between Old English Art and Poetry,” Viator 5 (1974): 185 [185–97], who observes that “a brief consideration of some stylistic analogies between Old English art and poetry will suggest that the hypothesis is not wholly scornworthy, and that a certain light can be thrown on the nature and stylistic premises of Old English poetry by an examination of the contemporaneous art.” 3. Leslie Whitbread, “Wulfstan Homilies XXIX, XXX, and Some Related Texts,” Anglia 81 (1963): 359. 4. E.A. Lowe, “Codices Rescripti: A List of the Oldest Latin Palimpsests with Stray Observations on Their Origin,” Palaeographical Papers 1907–1965, ed. Ludwig Bieler, vol. 2 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), pp. 480–519. Lowe, p. 480, observes that Émile Chatelain gave the first account of palimpsests in the Annuaire of the École Pratique (1904; publ. 1903). Lowe’s list comes off the Codices Latini Antiquissimi program, where the “lower script” antedates the ninth century. I am following Lowe, pp. 481–84, in this paragraph. See now Georges Declercq, ed. Early Medieval Palimpsests, Bibliologia 26 (2007), with special reference to Beneventan script and research aided by digital technology. The promising collection Signs on the Edge: Space, Text, and Margin in Medieval Manuscripts, ed. Sarah Larratt Keefer and Rolf H. Bremmer, Jr. (Paris and Leuven: Peeters, 2007), came into my hands too late for mention in these pages. Andrew Prescott takes an extended view of what a palimpsest is in “What’s in a Number? The Physical Organization of the Manuscript Collections of the British Library,” in Beatus Vir, ed. A.N. Doane and Kirsten Wolf, MRTS 319 (Tempe: ACMRS, 2006), pp. 471–525. For further discussion

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6.

7.

8.

9.

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14.

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of palimpsests with special reference to the Latin tradition, see the essay in this volume by Adrian Papahagi. In Lowe’s list, these are: Karlsruhe, Landesbibliothek Aug. CLXVII (Irish), Bede, De Temporum Ratione Milan, Ambrosiana M. 12 sup., Beda, De Temporum Ratione Oxford, Bodleian, Auctarium F.III.15 [=cat. 3511], Beda, “Computus” See also André Wilmart, Codices Reginenses Latini, vol. 2 (Vatican Library, 1937), pp. 710–19, for a full description of contents. For a photo of fol. 170v, see my note, “Vatican Library, Ms. Reg. Lat. 497, fol. 71v,” OEN 15.1 (1981): 34–35, and for a sharper photograph and transcript of the text, see Janet M. Bately, “The Vatican Fragment of the Old English Orosius,” English Studies 45 (1964): 224–30, where the photograph is between 224 and 225. N. Denholm-Young, Handwriting in England and Wales (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1954), p. 58 n. 4, clearly following O.B. Schlutter, who edited Faksimile und Transliteration des Épinaler Glossars, Bibliothek der Angelsäschsichen Prosa 8 (1912), p. iv, says that the Épinal Glossary is a palimpsest, a claim denied by Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (1957; reissued with suppl. Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), p. 152. Kevin Kiernan, Beowulf and the Beowulf Manuscript, rev. ed. with foreword by Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe (1981; Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996). The frontispiece is a color facsimile of fol. 179r, while the cover on the paperback edition offers a color facsimile of fol. 179v. In the 1996 revision of his 1981 book, Kiernan responds to his critics, pp. xv–xxviii. O’Brien O’Keeffe, p. xiii, concludes her foreword [ixxiii]: “[W]hat cannot be doubted is the impact this book has had on Beowulf studies. Quite simply, it is impossible to engage Beowulf seriously without engaging the arguments Kiernan sets forth in this book.” The Walters Art Gallery, having accepted the task of restoring the manuscript, offers a very helpful website at http://www.archimedespalimpsest. org. See Barbara A. Shailor, The Medieval Book (New Haven: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, 1988), pp. 9–10, with photo under ultraviolet at p. 10. The most available edition is now found in Medieval Academy Reprints in Teaching 28 (1991; repr. Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1994). Leslie Brubaker, “Palimpsest,” in Dictionary of the Middle Ages, vol. 9 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1987), p. 355. Richard Galpin, “Erasure in Art: Destruction, Deconstruction, and Palimpsest” [February 1998], now moved to http://www.richardgalpin. co.uk/archive/erasure.htm. I am summarizing the anecdote from Galpin’s introduction, 1–2.

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15. The facsimile edition is Ælfric’s First Series of Catholic Homilies, ed. Norman Eliason and Peter Clemoes, EEMF 13 (1966). The Catholic Homilies appear now in three volumes: Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies: The First Series, ed. Peter Clemoes, EETS s.s. 17 (1997); Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies: The Second Series, Text, ed. Malcolm Godden, EETS s.s. 5 (1979); Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies: Introduction, Commentary, and Glossary, ed. Malcolm Godden, EETS s.s. 18 (2000). 16. Ælfric’s First Series, ed. Eliason and Clemoes, p. 19. 17. Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies, ed. Clemoes, pp. 64–6, concisely provides the larger picture: some thousand alterations around the composition stage and another hundred or so produce readings not found in any other copy. The Royal manuscript, as Clemoes’s stemma on p. 137 suggests, has no extant descendants. Clemoes, 65v n. 1, indicates that he was responsible for pp. 28–35 of the introduction to the facsimile. 18. Ælfric’s First Series, ed. Eliason and Clemoes, p. 19 n. 8, gives a list of likely interventions. 19. The excised passage is available in Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies, ed. Clemoes, in Appendix A.1, p. 531, with discussion of the marginal note at p. 65. 20. Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies, ed. Clemoes, p. 65. 21. Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies, ed. Clemoes, p. 65. 22. N.R. Ker, “The Handwriting of Archbishop Wulfstan,” in England Before the Conquest: Studies in Primary Sources Presented to Dorothy Whitelock, ed. Peter Clemoes and Kathleen Hughes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), pp. 315–31. Wulfstan, The Copenhagen Wulfstan Collection, ed. James E. Cross and Jennifer Morrish Tunberg, EEMF 25 (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1993), pp. 44–49, where Morrish Tunberg reviews Ker’s work in the context of subsequent criticism and sides with him on the major points concerning Wulfstan and his interventions. 23. Ker, “The Handwriting of Archbishop Wulfstan,” p. 319. Ker has no particular interest in recording simple errors. 24. Ker, “The Handwriting of Archbishop Wulfstan,” pp. 321–22. 25. A Wulfstan Manuscript Containing Institutes, Laws, and Homilies, ed. H.R. Loyn, EEMF 17 (1971). 26. The word is Morrish Tunberg’s, p. 45. The Latin poem, as printed by Ker, “The Handwriting of Archbishop Wulfstan,” pp. 326–27, from Cotton Vespasian A.XIV: Qui legis hunc titulum domino da uota tonanti. Archipontifice pro uulfstano uenerando; Floret in hoc opere pia mentio presulus archi. Wlfstani cui det dominus pia regna polorum. ‘Et sibi commissos tueatur ab hosti maligno;’ Pontificis bonitas manet hic memoranda ierarchi. Wlfstani supero qui sit conscriptus in albo; Est laus uulfstano mea pulchritudo benigno. Pontifici cui sit dominus sine fine serenus;

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OLD ENGLISH HOMILETIC COMPOSITION

27. 28.

29. 30. 31.

32.

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Comere me comiter iussit ita presulis archi Wlfstani pietas data sit cui arce corona. Presule uulfstano hoc opus est censente paratum. Pollice quod docto inpressit subtilis aliptes. Ker notes that the margin is cut and that the fifth line is an addition perhaps by Wulfstan. Morrish Tunberg, with help from Terence Owen Tunberg, offers this translation, p. 45: You who read this text, give prayers to God the Thunderer On behalf of the revered Archbishop Wulfstan. In this work there f lourishes a sacred reminder of the Archbishop, Of Wulfstan, to whom may God grant the holy realms of heaven, And may He protect those entrusted to Him from the harmful enemy. Here there remains to be remembered the goodness of the Archbishop, Of Wulfstan; may he be inscribed in Heaven’s Book of Life. My beauty is praise for kind Wulfstan, To which Archbishop may God be benevolent forever. And so, the dutifulness of Archbishop Wulfstan has graciously given the orders to fashion me; May he be given a crown in heaven. At the behest of Wulfstan the Archbishop, this work was prepared, Which the clever scribe set down with his learned fingers. In Wulfstan, The Copenhagen Wulfstan, ed. Cross and Morrish Tunberg, Morrish Tunberg summarizes the controversies, pp. 45–47. Wulfstan, The Homilies of Wulfstan, ed. Dorothy Bethurum (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), pp. 22–24, for the stemma and discussion; pp. 255–75 for the edited texts. Wulfstan, The Homilies of Wulfstan, ed. Bethurum, pp. 22–24. Wulfstan, The Homilies of Wulfstan, ed. Bethurum, p. 23. In addition to Bethurum, one may cite Wulfstan: Sammlung der ihm zugeschriebenen Homilien nebst Untersuchungen über ihre Echtheit, ed. Arthur S. Napier (Berlin, 1883); Karl Jost, ed., Wulfstanstudien, Schweizer Anglistische Arbeiten (Bern: A. Francke, 1950); Wulfstan, Sermo Lupi, ed. Dorothy Whitelock (London: Methuen, 1939), in many reprints. Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana IV.29 (62), ed. Joseph Martin, CCSL 32 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1962), pp. 165–66: “Sunt sane quidam, qui bene pronuntiare possunt, quid autem pronuntient, excogitare non possunt. Quod si ab aliis, sumant eloquenter sapienterque conscriptum memoriaeque commendent atque ad populum proferant, si eam personam gerunt, non improbe faciunt.” D.W. Robertson, On Christian Doctrine (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1958) offers this translation: “There are some who can speak well but who cannot think of anything to say. If they take something eloquently and wisely written by others, memorize it, and offer it to the people in the person of the author, they do not do

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33.

34. 35. 36.

37.

38.

39. 40. 41. 42. 43.

44. 45.

wickedly” (pp. 166–67). R.P.H. Green, On Christian Teaching (Oxford: OUP, 1999), translates the ending differently: “[A]nd then bring that to their audience, they are not doing anything wrong, provided that they adhere to this role” (p. 144). Donald G. Scragg, “Napier’s ‘Wulfstan’ Homily XXX: Its Sources, Its Relationship to the Vercelli Book, and Its Style,” ASE 6 (1977): 197 [197–211]. Scragg, “Napier’s ‘Wulfstan’ Homily,” p. 198. Scragg, “Napier’s ‘Wulfstan’ Homily,” p. 198. For my discussion of Vercelli X, see “Vercelli Homilies: Style and Structure,” in The Old English Homily and Its Backgrounds, ed. Paul E. Szarmach and Bernard F. Huppé (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1978), pp. 244–48. Malcolm Godden, “The Relations of Wulfstan and Ælfric: a Reassessment,” in Wulfstan, Archbishop of York, ed. Matthew Townend, Studies in the Early Middle Ages 10 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), pp. 353–74. Godden also detects Wulfstan’s restless habit of composition: “His constant tinkering with his own work suggests a man obsessive about the best formulation but incapable of satisfying himself ” (p. 372). In the same collection Eric Stanley focuses on “Wulfstan and Ælfric: ‘The True Difference between the Law and the Gospel,’ ” pp. 429–41. Ælfric, Homilies of Ælfric: A Supplementary Collection, ed. John C. Pope, EETS o.s. 260 (1968), vol. 2, pp. 667–724; Wulfstan, The Homilies of Wulfstan, ed. Bethurum, pp. 222–24, with notes at pp. 333–39. Pope gives a detailed discussion of the eight manuscripts (including the Wulfstan “revision”). Ælfric, Homilies of Ælfric, ed. Pope, pp. 670–71. Wulfstan, The Homilies of Wulfstan, ed. Bethurum, p. 333 with further details on pp. 32–33. Wulfstan, The Homilies of Wulfstan, ed. Bethurum, p. 334. Ælfric, Homilies of Ælfric, ed. Pope, pp. 668–69. Gérard Genette, Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree, trans. Channa Newman and Claude Doubinsky; foreword by Gerald Prince (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997). Prince, “Foreword,” in Genette, Palimpsests, p. x [ix–xi]. Denholm-Young, Handwriting in England and Wales, p. 58.

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CHAPTER 5 “IC BEDA” . . . “CWÆÐ BEDA”: REINSCRIBING BEDE IN THE OLD ENGLISH HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA GENTIS ANGLORUM Sharon M. Rowley

This essay examines literal and metaphorical palimpsests in the OEHE, emphasizing the strategies through which Bede’s translators represent Bede’s voice in direct and indirect discourse.1

A

ndré Crépin begins his essay “Bede and the Vernacular” by reminding his audience not only that Bede reputedly died while dictating an English translation, but also that none of Bede’s own translations survive.2 Crépin ponders whether Bede’s Latin could possibly tell us anything about his English. Playing what he calls a “donnish parlour game,” Crépin attempts to reconstruct the “lost sagas woven into the Latin text of the Ecclesiastical History” by framing Bede’s famous account of imperiumwielding kings from Book 2, chapter 5, in the style of Widsith and Beowulf.3 Although Crépin makes light of this antiquarian ventriloquism as he settles down to a serious discussion of Bede’s analyses of Old English place names and Cædmon’s Hymn, he has made an astonishing suggestion: Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica (HE)4 itself can be read as a palimpsest. Through these playful reinscriptions, Crépin reminds us that Bede’s own layers of authoritative Latin prose not only reshape Pliny, Solinus, Gildas, and Orosius for new audiences, but they also recast the oral accounts that he had heard, probably in English, from some of his informants.5 Although little of the vernacular finds its way into Bede’s HE, oral traces, including the ones at play around and behind Cædmon’s Hymn,

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appear throughout the text, though they often go unnoticed as such. We can almost hear Bede’s voice or those of his sources, along with the voices he reconstructs for characters like Wilfrid at the Synod of Whitby. “I myself knew a brother,” Bede tells us, or “a priest and abbot of the monastery of Partney, named Deda, a most truthful man, told me this” (HE 5.14, pp. 502–3, and 2.16, pp. 192–3). These clauses do more than report sources and form the basis of Bede’s authority; they generate a sense of immediacy of the narratorial persona that is both inscribed in and belied by language. Reading these oral traces as palimpsests reveals the fundamental way in which history always already reinscribes and translates the past. This, in turn, allows a reconsideration of the layers of authority involved in the reporting of history in the anonymous tenthcentury English version that adapts and transmits Bede’s great work to vernacular audiences. The Old English version of Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica (OEHE)6 contains both literal and metaphorical palimpsests: folio 115r of Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Tanner 10 (T) is a palimpsest,7 and hundreds of words and phrases in Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 279, part ii (O) contain layers of writing over erasures.8 These literal palimpsests ref lect the eventful material history of the OEHE; they afford us a glimpse of the processes through which the text survived and was adapted by scribes and translators.9 They are less easily separated than one might imagine from the reading of the OEHE as a metaphorical act of reinscription. After outlining the background of and differences between the OEHE and its Latin source, this essay looks closely at these literal and metaphorical palimpsests, with an emphasis on the strategies through which Bede’s Old English translators represent Bede’s own voice in direct and indirect discourse. Considering the impact of translation on a historical text, the palimpsest not only presents a tertium quid to the binary of the “word for word” versus “sense by sense” paradox of translation, but also provides a new way of thinking about the interface between the oral and the written, the author and the translator. The OEHE was translated anonymously sometime between 883 and 930.10 It survives in five substantial manuscripts and three short excerpts. In addition to T and O, the two manuscripts referenced above, these are: London, British Library, Cotton MS Domitian A.IX (Zu), fol. 11 (three excerpts),11 c.890 x c.930 / s. ix ex. (after 883) or x in. London, British Library, Cotton MS Otho B.XI (C),12 s. x med.–s. xi1 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 41 (B),13 s. xi1 Cambridge, University Library, MS Kk.3.18 (Ca),14 s. xi2

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With two exceptions, the origins of and relationships between the manuscripts of the OEHE are unknown.15 Manuscript C was copied in Winchester; Ca is a direct copy of O made by the scribe Hemming in Worcester (c.1062–95). Otherwise, as J.J. Campbell succinctly puts it, “the MSS . . . differ greatly among themselves in orthography and vocabulary, and none of them is a direct copy of the archetype.”16 The manuscript evidence suggests that the OEHE circulated in several additional manuscripts and was widely available in later Anglo-Saxon England. The differences between the OEHE and its Latin source have been underestimated by scholars, a point to which I will return. To summarize the larger differences: the OEHE reduces the overall length of its Latin source by about a third. It shortens Bede’s descriptions of England and Ireland, and omits most of the Roman history and selected details of the Easter controversy. The OEHE entirely eliminates the Pelagian heresy and Bede’s detailed account of St. Germanus’s battle against it. It also cuts or summarizes all of the papal correspondence, moves Gregory the Great’s Libellus Responsionum from Book I to the end of Book 3, rearranges many chapter breaks, and deletes Bede’s excerpts from Adomnán’s Book of Holy Places.17 The origins of the translation and identity of the translators remain unknown. Ælfric of Eynsham attributed the Old English translation to King Alfred; however, no documentary evidence connecting the text to the king or his program survives.18 Because of the Mercian dialect of the text, scholars have long agreed the king did not make the translation himself.19 Whether he commissioned it cannot be proven. While the circumstances in which the translation was made remain unclear, Thomas Miller presented clear philological evidence that more than one translator worked on the OEHE as we have it in his 1890–8 edition. Miller discusses Book 3, chapters 16–20, of the OEHE in detail because he posits his stemma on the divergence of this section—and it is here that the evidence begins to suggest a close material connection between text, translation, and palimpsest.20 Miller suggests that this section went missing, and was partially restored by one or two additional “editors.” Miller favored the notion of two “editors,” one for each of his theoretical branches (T and B from hypothetical [Y]; C, O, Ca from hypothetical [Z]).21 In 1930, Simeon Potter argued that one scribe discovered a section was missing, retranslated it, and inserted the text into his copy.22 Campbell took up the question again in 1952. He agreed with Potter that there was only one additional translator, strengthening the case on the basis of developments in our knowledge of Anglian vocabulary. Whitelock concurred, so the consensus since 1962 has been that the original translation of this section survives in the T and B texts, while someone else restored a section (plus

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an extra passage about Aidan) to the exemplar for the three other surviving manuscripts.23 Although we have no evidence revealing precisely how this replacement occurred, the process must have been akin to the circumstances that led to the palimpsest in T, fol. 115r. From fol. 105 to fol. 114, a midtenth-century scribe (Ker’s Scribe iii) replaced a section, presumably to restore a gap. After copying the section, the scribe erased and rewrote the text of fol. 115r, as Richard Gameson puts it, “to smooth the transition between the end of the section which he had added and the pre-existing beginning of Book V.”24 Although this palimpsest obscures the text below it, it actually reinscribes that same text. The act of replacing the missing section in Tanner 10, as well as the section of Book 3 from a now lost manuscript, demonstrates not only that the OEHE was considered important enough to repair in two different settings, but also that Scribe iii of Tanner 10 had access to another copy of the OEHE. In contrast, the “editor” who restored Book 3, chapters 16–18, to a manuscript that is now lost had access to a copy of the Latin, and had to translate the missing passages anew. Fascinatingly, Ca marks this variant section in Book 3 with what appear to be original rubricated annotations. The first, which is written in the blank space at the end of the preceding chapter (fol. 39v/27), reads: “EFT oðer cw(ide) ·” [then the other passage]. The second is written in the blank space at the end of the inserted passage (fol. 40v/29) and reads “7 eft oðer cwide ·” [and afterward the other passage]. These are significant additions to the exemplar, the O text, which contains no such annotations. They suggest that Hemming (or his rubricator) had access to another OEHE manuscript, like T or B. Although Hemming does not appear to have corrected the rest of his manuscript against the other, these reinscriptions and annotations provide clues as to the availability and importance of the OEHE in Anglo- Saxon England. Although Hemming (or his rubricator) marks out the fact that an “oðer” passage intrudes in Book 3, he silently incorporates the text of the many palimpsests in its exemplar. Manuscript O contains an estimated two thousand five hundred alterations, in three or more hands. Most of the alterations seem to be contemporary with the copying; some are in the red ink of the rubricator. Miller concluded that in O, the southern scribes copying the manuscript were correcting their Anglian exemplar.25 Many of the alterations involve words, phrases, or clauses written over erasures, or inserted between lines and in margins. Others fall on individual letters of all sorts: stressed and unstressed vowels, consonants, consonant clusters, or combinations of vowels and consonants. Finally, there are numerous instances where something has simply been erased. Although Miller’s suggestion is plausible, in many cases of erasure the lower text

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cannot be recovered to ascertain whether the alterations follow a clear pattern of modernization. A full analysis of these alterations and palimpsests is beyond the scope of the present essay. I mention them because they show how one group of scribes adapted and corrected their text. They also allow us to see how palimpsests can be entirely absorbed into the authoritative text in the process of textual transmission. Because O survived, we can see from whence many of the readings in Ca derive. Why Hemming (or his rubricator) chose to mark the variant passage in Book 3 but to incorporate the many alterations to his base text silently remains unknown. The evidence of these interventions, however, reminds us of the many textual layers contributing to the OEHE. The OEHE as we have it, then, is the work of several voices and hands, though the history of each contribution cannot be traced. For instance, although Miller seems to have been wrong about the number of translators involved in Book 3, a third translator did work on the OEHE. Whitelock confirms that someone other than the main translator worked on the lists of chapter headings. Based on the similar vocabulary, but inferior handling of the Latin, she suggests that this translator was a student or colleague of the main translator, but we cannot be certain.26 So, while there clearly is one principal translator, any conclusions about the question of the translation of the OEHE must always involve an awareness that the text as we know it results from the activity of several translators, as well as multiple scribes and editors. Despite this multiplicity, however, the editing is accurate and consistent throughout what remains a long text. When the main translator cuts a reference to a person or an event, there are no straggling references to that person or event later in the text.27 One possible inconsistency in the abridgement is in the section of Book 3 where the third translator supplied the missing section. The restoration includes a highly emotional instance of Bede’s first person singular direct address about Bishop Aidan, which the main translator had eliminated. This is just a small reminder of the way in which the question of how many people were working on the OEHE complicates the larger discussion. The complicated material history of the OEHE serves as a reminder of the ways in which time, chance, and human intervention mediate history; the accidence of survival shapes our understanding of medieval textuality. Erasure and reinscription join the punctus, the space between words, and marginalia in a visual economy that paleographers are still learning to interpret.28 Reading the OEHE as palimpsest highlights the problem of seeing versus “seeing as”—or between reading and “reading as.”29 The OEHE has historically been read as secondary, inferior to Bede’s Latin original and treated as a problematically literal translation. In Dorothy

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Whitelock’s assessment, the translation “supports Alfred’s complaints of the decline of scholarship.”30 She suggests that the main translator “fails to appreciate the value of sources,” concluding that Bede’s nearly modern handling of evidence “lay outside the conception of his translator.”31 Some sections, however, have been lauded as poetic.32 Furthermore, H.R. Loyn has demonstrated that Bede’s Old English translator supplies more historically accurate terms where Bede uses dux.33 But the fact that the OEHE is not the HE continues to assert itself: although Raymond St. Jacques argues that the translator is a master of prose narrative whose “fidelity, respect, and love for his Latin source are everywhere apparent,” he concludes that the translator’s vision of history betrays Bede’s.34 Such varied evaluations hinge on the (not unreasonable) assumption that a translation should be transparent, that is, “true” to either the word or spirit of its source. Problematically, the OEHE seems to be both or neither. Because the abridgement is painstakingly accurate overall, assertions that the main translator may not have understood Bede’s vision of history are troubling—especially given the clear evidence of his accurate, culturally specific command of Latin.35 It seems to me, moreover, that it is precisely his clear understanding of Bede’s historiography that informs his method of abridgment, especially in Books 1 and 5, where he essentially dismantles the imagery that makes the HE a classic of salvation history. I believe that the problem of the truth value of historical writing, along with the question of the task of the translator, lay at the heart of the contradictory assessments of the OEHE as a translation.36 The scholars who have come to mixed conclusions have been working within traditional linguistic, rhetorical, and formal frameworks. Each provides valuable insight into the OEHE, yet each comes to a slightly contradictory set of assertions about the translator’s skills and knowledge. These contradictions are reminiscent of the charges leveled at Bede himself prior to the practice of cultural studies: Bede was, at one time, both praised for his nearly modern sense of historical evidence, and roundly condemned for his inclusion of miracles in the HE. Scholarly awareness of Bede’s cultural, historiographical, and ecclesiastical milieu, however, has gone a long way toward fostering a more nuanced understanding of that text. Theoretical awareness of the ways in which histories operate as narratives in language, in conjunction with the consciousness that language is embedded in and ref lective of culture, has allowed Bede scholarship to move away from the superficial dichotomy of truth versus fiction. An analysis of the instances in which the translators render the narrator’s use of direct address either in the first person singular or as free indirect discourse lays the groundwork for an exploration of several markedly

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self-conscious instances of translation, those that echo authority and the oral traces behind the text of Bede’s narratorial voice. Furthermore, because these assessments also tend to invoke the critical dichotomy of the “sense for sense” versus “word for word” paradox of translation theory, reading history and translation as palimpsests reframes the question of the skills and knowledge of the translators of the OEHE productively, in terms of layers of reinscription that revise and represent Bede’s HE for tenth-century vernacular audiences, just as Bede himself revised and represented what Crépin called the “lost sagas” behind his own text for Latin audiences. While St. Jacques’s title makes clear reference to the formulation of the translation paradox, “hwilum word be worde hwilum andgit of andgiete,” in the prose preface to King Alfred’s translation of Gregory’s Pastoral Care, St. Jacques never directly addresses Alfred’s idiosyncratic phrasing, nor the paradox itself as such. In fact, none of the critics of the OEHE that I have mentioned do, though it obviously contributes to the organization of their assessments. In this context, one of the most striking excisions from the OEHE is Bede’s own phrasing of the paradox in the Cædmon episode: “Hic est sensus non autem ordo ipse uerborum, quae dormiens ille canebat; neque enim possunt carmina, quamuis optime conposita, ex alia in aliam linguam ad uerbum sine detrimento sui decoris ac dignitatis transferri” [“This is the sense but not the order of the words which he sang as he slept. For it is not possible to translate verse, however well composed, literally from one language to another without damage to sound and sense”].37 Bede tailors his statement of the sense/word dilemma to support his decision to paraphrase rather than translate Cædmon’s Hymn here. In contrast, Alfred’s phrasing, which translates roughly to “sometimes word for word, sometimes sense for sense,” is, as Robert Stanton points out, a “waff ling combination of the two terms.”38 Alfred’s use of this phrasing demonstrates awareness of the formula in a form closer to the classical formulation than Bede’s in later Anglo- Saxon England.39 Although Alfred claims that he learned this method from his teachers, Stanton speculates that Alfred’s usage ultimately derives from Jerome’s preface to the Vulgate or the writings of Gregory the Great, which suggests multiple possible avenues of transmission into later Anglo-Saxon England.40 As Rita Copeland has demonstrated, Jerome and the others who helped transmit this formula into the Middle Ages were actively misquoting and manipulating it, even as they theorized about the act of translation in relation to sacred texts.41 If the ease with which Bede adapts the sense/word phrasing to justify his own decisions as a translator is any indication, and if Alfred’s formulation is what he was taught, then it seems clear that the question of this paradox and of the task of translation

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itself was self- consciously in play in Anglo- Saxon England. Given the transmission of sophisticated thought and learning about grammar and rhetoric from late antiquity through the early Middle Ages and into Anglo- Saxon England, as Copeland, Stanton, and Martin Irvine demonstrate, the cultural and intellectual contexts of the OEHE—as difficult at they are to reconstruct—suggest that there may be more going on in the gap between the main translator’s acknowledged craft at the level of the word, and the historical allegations of his incompetence at the level of historical sense.42 In fact, the OEHE may have helped develop English as a literary language. To translate Bede’s words accurately, the translators often had to stretch the limits of the language and build new words, a habit for which they have sometimes been criticized. Because the main translator patterned the words he built on Bede’s Latin vocabulary, Henry Sweet described the language of the OEHE as unidiomatic, or even “unnatural.”43 But, as Frederick Klaeber cautioned, “we must beware of condemning these coinages indiscriminately as illegitimate. The necessity of finding equivalents for certain Latin terms heavily taxed the inventiveness of the Anglo- Saxon scholar.”44 The fact that the translators preferred to build new English words using methods of compounding, prefixing, and suffixing that are native to English as a language, rather than simply borrowing the words from Latin, can be read as an innovative strategy of reinscription that pays homage to Bede. Some examples drawn from the work of Gregory Waite demonstrate word formation on a morpheme-morpheme basis. A few examples of this are the formation of fore-wæs from prae-fuit [was before or over], ut-amærde from exterminauit [banished], and under-þeodde from subiugatis [subjugated].45 Sometimes, the OEHE translator even patterns groups of words in ways parallel to Latin constructions, for example, arfæst, ar-fæst-nes, ar-fæst-lice for pius, pietas, pie [pious, piety, piously] or ge-flit, flitan, ge-flit-lice for certamen, certare, certatim [contest, to contend, in competition]. Such examples show that the translator of the OEHE was aware of and able to exploit parallelisms in methods of word formation between Old English and Latin. Such an ability may be construed as ref lecting expertise in both languages. So, while some of the OEHE vocabulary is often artificial and Latinate, “it is possible that certain innovations in the [OEHE] and related works helped to establish norms of usage subsequently in tenth-century ecclesiastical prose.”46 An examination of how the Old English translators treat Bede’s narratorial persona reveals a series of strategies, including the use of grammatically equivalent constructions, as well as a series of shifts, which seem to depend on context in some cases, and on linguistic

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constraints in others. Their translation ref lects, as Clem Robyns puts it, translation as a confrontation with “alien discourses,” as well as the intrusion of alien discourses into the target language.47 Reading history as a palimpsest recasts the dynamics of confrontation and intrusion as reinscription rather than betrayal. Copeland’s emphasis on the cultural aspects of vernacularity and her demonstration of the interplay between the acts of reading, interpretation, and translation in the Middle Ages make it clear that Paul Ricoeur’s dialogic model of reading can help us move beyond the sense/word dilemma in a way that dovetails with the concept of the palimpsest as a renewal. According to Ricoeur, “to read is, on any hypothesis, to conjoin a new discourse to the discourse of the text. This conjunction of discourses reveals, in the very constitution of the text, an original capacity for renewal, which is its open character.”48 Translation is only the most marked example of negotiating cultural and discursive difference in language—not only between languages, but within language and over time. The difficult choices involved in translating Bede’s Latin into Old English manifest not only pressures related to alien constructions, but also the ways in which language and sense can be renewed to live beyond and into new contexts. The choices that the Old English translators make in relation to Bede’s own voice merit close attention. Bede deploys the first person singular with great care; in some cases, his translators follow his Latin closely so as to speak in Bede’s voice in English. As Fred Robinson has pointed out, one of the scribes of CCCC 41 ventriloquized Bede by adding a verse in the first person to the metrical envoi at the end of the B text.49 In many cases, however, the Old English translators introduce phrases and clauses that emphasize the fact of translation, converting direct discourse into indirect discourse by adding phrases such as “Bede says.” The immediate textual contexts for examining direct discourse in the OEHE are thick: almost all of the papal correspondence that remains involves direct discourse. Furthermore, the majority of the miracle stories are narrated in direct discourse, either by the person who experienced the miracle, or by someone who knew the person who performed or benefited from the miracle. The grammatical contexts are also varied and deep. Throughout the Latin original and OEHE, there are examples of grammatically equivalent translations: the translators successfully translate first person singular constructions in Latin to first person singular constructions in English. They also translate first person plural to first person plural, and indirect constructions to equivalent indirect constructions. Bede relates the bulk of his narrative in indirect discourse, using indirect constructions and first person plural much more often than he uses first person

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singular; instances of the latter begin in Book 2 and increase as Bede draws closer to his own time and acquaintances. The translators were able to translate much of their text literally by using or constructing parallel forms. There are very few instances where Bede uses ego; nostrum is more common, and of course, the OEHE inserts pronouns where the Latin shows inf lections. Bede himself often switches between first person singular and plural. For example, Quae mihi cuncta sic esse facta reuerentissimus meus conpresbyter Edgisl referebat qui tunc in illo monasterio degebat. Postea autem, discedentibus inde ob desolationem plurimis incolarum, in nostro monasterio plurimo tempore conuersatus ibidemque defunctus est. Haec ideo nostrae historiae inserenda credidimus ut admoneremmus lectorum operum Domini. [It was my revered fellow priest Eadgisl, who then lived in the monastery, who told me of these happenings. After most of the inhabitants had left Coldingham because it was in ruins, he lived a long time in our monastery and died here. It seemed desirable to include this story in our History so as to warn the reader as to the workings of the Lord.] (HE 4.25, pp. 426–7)

The OEHE matches these shifts: All þæs ðing me ðus gewurden se arwyrða min efenmæssepreost Eedgyls sægde, se ða in ðam mynstre eardade 7 drohtode 7 eft in ussum mynstre longe tide lifde 7 þær forðferde, æfter ðon monige ðara bigengena ðonon gewitan for þære burge tolesnesse. Ðis spel we forðon setton in ure béc þæt we men monede ðæt hio gesege Dryhtnes weorc. [My venerable fellow priest Eadgyls, who at that time lived and dwelled in that monastery, told me all these things (which) happened. And then he lived a long time in our monastery, and there died, after that many of the inhabitants left there because of the dissolution of the town. Therefore we wrote this story in our book that we may warn men that it speaks the work of the Lord.] (OEHE 4.25, pp. 356–7)50

The Old English translators introduce a variety of adaptations. For example, they transform some passages in which Bede uses the first person singular or impersonal constructions into passages with first person plural constructions. For example, the OEHE reads, “Sculon we áne cyðnesse his mægenes secgan, þæt we his oðer mægen þy eað ongytan magon” [we shall give one proof of his miraculous power, that we may the more readily comprehend his other miracles] (OEHE 2.7, p. 118), for Denique ut unum uirtutis eius, unde cetera intellegi possint, testimonium referam [I will relate, for example, one instance of his power from which the rest may be inferred] (HE 2.7, p. 156). It also renders Bede’s Nec ab re est unum

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e pluribus, quae ad hanc crucem patrata sunt, uirtutis miraculum narrare [It is not irrelevant to narrate one of the many . . . ] (HE 3.2, p. 216) as “Nis forðon ungerisne þæt we aan mægen 7 aan wundor of monegum asecgan” [It is not improper, therefore, that we tell one miracle and one wonder of many] (OEHE 3.2, p. 156). The OEHE translates first person singular deponent verbs (Latin reor, arbitror) using impersonal constructions and first person plural: Inter quae nequaquam silentio praetereundum reor . . . [Among these stories I think I ought not to pass over in silence . . . ] (HE 3.11, p. 244) “Betweoh ðas ðing nis to forswigienne . . . ” [Among these things it is not to pass over in silence . . . ] (OEHE 3.9, p. 182) Sane nullatenus praetereundum arbitror miraculum sanitatis . . . [I think, however, that it would be far from fitting to pass over a miracle of healing . . . ] (HE 4.10, p. 364) “Þonne is sum wundor hælo, þe us nis to forlættenne . . . ” [Now there is a wonder of healing, that is not for us to omit . . . ] (OEHE 4.13, p. 292) Vbi silentio praetereundum non esse reor . . . [I think that I must not pass over in silence . . . ] (HE 4.16/14, p. 382) “Nis þonne no to forswigienne . . . ” [It is not, then, to pass over in silence . . . ] (OEHE 4.18, pp. 308–9)51

There is also at least one instance where a third person subjunctive becomes first person. Bede’s Quod utinam exhinc etiam nostrarum lectione litterarum fiat! [And may the reading of this account of ours have the same effect!] (HE 5.14, pp. 504–5) becomes “ic eac swylce wisce forð swa on leornunge ura stafa” [I also wish henceforth the same on the reading of our account] (OEHE 5.15, p. 444).52 (Notice also the switch to the first person plural possessive in both.) In several instances where Bede reports that he knew someone, or heard a story directly, the translators choose to shift first person singular direct discourse into free indirect discourse; that is, they include Bede’s first singular constructions, but add a third person phrase or clause to change the syntax, switching from “he told me” to “Bede said, ‘He told me,’ ” or the like. Surprisingly, none of these passages have to do with the famously problematic subjects, such as the Easter Controversy, from which the translators might like to distance themselves. In fact, these interpolations occur in stories about King Oswald and St. Fursey. For example, the OEHE translates Bede’s De huius fide prouinciae narrauit mihi presbyter et abbas quidam uir ueracissimus de monasterio Peartaneu, uocabulo Deda [a priest and abbot of the monastery of Partney, named Deda, a most truthful man, told me this

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regarding the faith of the kingdom] (HE 2.16, pp. 192–3) with “Bi þisse mægðe geleafan, cwæð he Beda, me sægde sum arwyrðe mæssepreost 7 abbud of Peortanea þæm ham, se wæs Deda haten” [With regard to the faith of this people, said he, Bede, a venerable priest, abbot of the house of Parteney, called Deda, spoke to me] (OEHE 2.13, pp. 144–5). There are several examples of this strategy; two more should suffice to demonstrate: Quod ita esse gestum, qui referebat mihi frater inde adueniens adiecit, quod eo adhuc tempore quo mecum loquebatur, superesset in eo monasterio iam iuuenis ille, in quo tunc puero factum erat hoc miraculum sanitatis. [The brother who told me of the incident and had come from the monastery added that, at the time he was speaking to me, the boy to whom the miracle happened was still at the monastery.] (HE 3.12, pp. 250–1) Cwom sum broðor þonon, cwæð Beda, þe me sægde þæt hit þus gedon wære: 7 eac sægde, þe se ilca broðor þa gyt in þæm mynstre lifigende wære, in þæm cneohtwesendum þis hælo wundor geworden wæs. [A brother came from that place, said Bede, who told me that it happened thus, and also said that the same brother was still alive in the monastery, in which during his boyhood this miracle of healing occurred.] (OEHE 3.10, pp. 186–8)

And: Superest adhuc frater quidam senior monasterii nostri, qui narrare solet dixisse sibi quendam multum ueracem ac religiosum hominem, quod ipsum Furseum uiderit in prouincia Orientalium Anglorum, illasque uisiones ex ipsius ore audierit. [An aged brother is still living in our monastery who is wont to relate that a most truthful and pious man told him that he had seen Fursa himself in the kingdom of the East Angles and had heard these visions from his own mouth.] (HE 3.19, pp. 274–5) Is nu gena sum ald broðor lifiende usses mynstres, se me sægde, cwæð se þe ðas booc wrat, þæt him sægde sum swiðe æfest monn 7 geþungen þæt he ðone Furseum gesege in Eastengla mægðe, 7 þa his gesihðe æt his seolfes muðe gehyrde. [There is now still living in our monastery an old brother who told me—said he who wrote this book—that a very devout and pious man told him that he saw Furseus in the province of the East Angles, and heard his visions from his own mouth.] (OEHE 3.14, pp. 216–7)53

It seems plausible to suggest that the living witness, or the claim that someone told “me” something, inf luences the translators’ choice to

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convert direct discourse to indirect or free indirect discourse. But the translators are not entirely consistent. There is at least one instance where Bede says, Noui autem ipse fratrem, quem utinam non nossem [I myself knew a brother, and I would that I had not known him] (HE 5.14, pp. 502–3), which is translated literally, “Ic seolfa cuðe sumne broðor ðone ic wold ðæt ic næfre cuðe” (OEHE, 4.15, pp. 442–3).54 If the translators’ strategy had been to distance themselves from present- day or problematic issues, this passage would have been a likely candidate for a switch to indirect discourse. It is important to note that the translators do not engage indirect discourse as a distancing strategy in every case of a living witness. Phrasings of time, especially concerning places where miracles occur or witnesses survive “to this day” are translated “nu gen to dæg” throughout the OEHE. Such statements also often include a change of syntax to free indirect discourse: Quo defuncto, pontificatum pro eo suscepit Fortheri, qui usque hodie superest [On his death Forthere, who is still living to this day, became bishop in his place] (HE 5.18, pp. 514–5) becomes “Þa he þa forðferde, þa onfeng fore hine þone bysceophad Forðere, se gen oð to dæge, cwæð se writere, lifigende is” [When he died, then Forthere, who up until today, said the writer, is living, took from him the bishopric] (OEHE 5.16, p. 448).55 Another example is slightly more difficult: Erat in eodem monasterio frater quidam, nomine Badudegn, tempore non pauco hospitum ministerio deseruiens, qui nunc usque superest, testimonium habens ab uniuersis fratribus, cunctisque superuenientibus hospitibus, quod uir esset multae pietatis ac religionis, iniunctoque sibi officio supernae tantum mercedis gratia subditus. [There was in the same monastery a brother named Baduthegn, who is still alive and who for a long time had acted as guestmaster. It is the testimony of all the brothers and the guests who visited there that he was a man of great piety and devotion, who carried out his duties solely for the sake of the heavenly reward.] (HE 4.29[31], pp. 444–5) Wæs in ðæm ilcan mynstre sum broðor, ðæs noma wæs Beadoþegn, se wæs lange tid cumena arðegen þara ðe þæt mynster sohton 7 cwæð he ða gena lifgende wære þa he þis gewrit sette. Hæfde he gewitnesse 7 cyðnesse from eallum ðæm broðrum 7 from eallum þam cumendum þe ðæt mynster sohton. [There was in the same monastery a brother who was named Beadothegn, who was for a long time attendant of the guests that sought the monastery. And (Bede) said he was still living when he composed the account. He had witness and testimony from all the brothers and from all the guests who sought the monastery . . . ] (OEHE 4.32, p. 378)56

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Here we have a surviving witness and a singular nominative present participle habens, parallel to deseruiens, which must refer back to Beadoþegn. Colgrave and Mynors break Bede’s Latin into two Modern English sentences, translating testimonium habens ab uniuersis fratribus . . . as “It is the testimony of all the brothers . . . .” The Old English also breaks this passage into two sentences. Miller translates the passage: “And the historian said that the man was still alive when he composed the account. He had witness and testimony . . . ” (OEHE 4.31, p. 379). It is quite possible that any attempt to translate Bede’s Latin here would be awkward, but the Old English translation includes an ambiguous pronoun. Miller inserts “the historian,” thereby creating a clear connection between Bede as writer and as receiver of the testimony. Notably, this passage follows closely upon a statement by Bede that he was including in the life of Cuðbert new things he had heard. He made the claim in the first person singular, which the Old English translates literally, “ac in ðissum stære we sceoldon an toætecan, þe us gelamp þæt we neowan gehyrdon” [but we were obliged to add one in this history of ours, which we happened to hear lately] (OEHE 4.31, pp. 378–9). Consequently, the subsequent interpolation of “cwæð he . . . þa he þis gewrit sette” into the Beadoþegn material becomes as striking as it is awkward. If the main translator is willing to ventriloquize Bede’s discussion of something he heard recently a few lines above, why mark the transmission of the Beadoþegn story so emphatically? It may be that these choices are about marking difference after all, a calling of attention to the act of reinscription, as such. The main translator does not switch the narrator’s voice to distance himself from difficult subjects, nor do any of the translators seem uncomfortable about translating the voice of Bede’s historical narrator transparently and literally most of the time. Sometimes grammatical constraints come into play, and the Old English adapts to translate alien forms into English. The shift to free indirect discourse is especially marked, and seems to relate to stories involving surviving witnesses; it therefore also appears to manifest awareness of both historical truth and historical difference. As Willi Paul Adams points out, there is a responsibility among translators of history to “explain change over time.”57 But that very authenticity requires that the translation never “let readers forget that they are reading a translation.” Some of the translators’ choices seem to do just that: the palimpsested HE is visible through the Latinate forms and references to Bede in the Old English upper text. As reinscription, the OEHE translates Bede’s Latin for wider vernacular audiences and brings it forward into later Anglo- Saxon England. It engages multiple strategies for representing Bede and what he heard from others who were still living during his lifetime. In most cases,

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the OEHE mimics Bede in his use of varied persons and tenses across the narrative of the HE; however, in some cases it calls attention to the fact of translation. Doing so, it reiterates the importance of both the witnesses and the oral stories. If these passages are no longer immediate to readers, they were immediate to Bede. Because we have Bede’s Latin original and five substantial manuscripts of the OEHE, we can trace the many textual and material levels, including the erasures, transformations, and echoes of voices just as we trace the survival and repair of text and codex. The OEHE does not restore the lost sagas behind Bede’s HE; rather, it becomes part of the eventful saga of the HE itself. It provides valuable glimpses into the reception and interpretation of Bede’s great work in the tenth century; at the same time it presents clear evidence of the ways in which the palimpsest, too, can preserve and disappear. Notes 1. A preliminary version of this essay was presented at the International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 2005. 2. André Crépin, “Bede and the Vernacular,” in Famulus Christi: Essays in Commemoration of the Thirteenth Centenary of the Birth of the Venerable Bede, ed. Gerald Bonner (London: SPCK, 1976), p. 170 [170–92]. 3. Crépin, “Bede and the Vernacular,” pp. 174–75. 4. Bede, Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. and trans. Bertram Colgrave and R.A.B. Mynors (1969; repr. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992). All quotations of the HE hereafter are taken from this edition. 5. Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, ed. Colgrave and Mynors, p. 14 n.1: “The first paragraph . . . is a mosaic of quotations from Pliny’s Natural History, Gildas’ Ruin of Britain, Solinus’ Polyhistor, and Orosius.” 6. Thomas Miller, ed. and trans. The Old English Version of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, EETS, o.s., 95, 96, 110, 111 (1890–8; repr. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2003). 7. s. x1, Ker, Catalogue, no. 351; Gneuss, Handlist, no. 668. N.R. Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957); Helmut Gneuss, Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A List of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100, MRTS 241 (Tempe: ACMRS, 2001); see also Richard Gameson, “The Decoration of the Tanner Bede,” ASE 21 (1992): 129 [115–59]. 8. s. xi in., Ker, Catalogue, no. 354; Gneuss, Handlist, no. 673. 9. On the “eventful” nature of the HE, see Allen Frantzen, Desire for Origins (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1990). 10. These dates ref lect the window determined by the earliest manuscript evidence. David Dumville argues for the earlier date of London, British Library Cotton MS Domitian A.ix. See Dumville, “English Square

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11. 12. 13.

14. 15.

16. 17.

18.

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Minuscule Script: The Background and Earliest Phases,” ASE 16 (1985): 147–79. Ker, Catalogue, no. 151; Gneuss, Handlist, no. 330f. Ker, Catalogue, no. 354; Gneuss, Handlist, no. 673. Ker, Catalogue, no. 32; Gneuss, Handlist, no. 39; Mildred Budny, Insular, Anglo-Saxon and Early Anglo-Norman Manuscript Art at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge: An Illustrated Catalogue (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute, 1997), no. 32. Ker, Catalogue, no. 23; Gneuss, Handlist, no. 22. The manuscripts have been described by Ker. Gameson and Bately also describe manuscript T in detail. I will also provide complete new descriptions in my forthcoming study and new edition. Janet M. Bately, ed. The Tanner Bede: The Old English Version of Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica, Oxford Bodleian Library Tanner 10 Together with the Mediaeval Binding Leaves, Oxford Bodleian Library Tanner 10* and the Domitian Extracts, London British Library Cotton Domitian A IX Fol. 11, EEMF 24 (1992). For a fuller discussion of the problem of the OEHE stemma, see Dorothy Whitelock, “The List of Chapter-Headings in the Old English Bede,” in Old English Studies in Honour of John C. Pope, ed. Robert B. Burlin and Edward B. Irving, Jr. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974) and S.M. Rowley, “Nostalgia and the Rhetoric of Lack: The Missing Old English Bede Exemplar for Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 41,” in Old English Literature in Its Manuscript Contexts, ed. Joyce Tally Lionarons (Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2004), pp. 11–35. J.J. Campbell, “The OE Bede: Book III, Chapters 16–20,” MLN (1953): 381 [381–86]. On the replacement of the Libellus Responsionum, see Sharon M. Rowley, “Shifting Contexts: Reading Gregory’s Letter in Book III of the Tanner Bede,” in Rome and the North: The Early Reception of Gregory the Great in Germanic Europe, ed. Rolf Bremmer, Kees Dekker, David F. Johnson, Mediaevalia Groningana n.s. 4. (Louvain: Peeters, 2001), pp. 83–92. The debate about the relationship of the OEHE to Alfred’s program is extensive. For a fuller discussion, see Sharon M. Rowley, “Bede in Later Anglo- Saxon England,” in The Cambridge Companion to Bede, ed. Scott DiGregorio (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 216–28. See also Whitelock, “The Old English Bede,” Sir Israel Gollancz Memorial Lecture 1962, in British Academy Papers on Anglo-Saxon England, ed. E.G. Stanley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 227–61; Malcolm Godden, “Did King Alfred Write Anything?” Medium Ævum 76.1 (2007): 1–23; Janet Bately, “Old English Prose Before and During the Reign of Alfred,” ASE 17 (1988): 93–138, and “The Alfredian Canon Revisited,” in King Alfred The Great, ed. Timothy Reuter (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), pp. 107–120; Gregory G. Waite, “The Vocabulary of the Old English Version of Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica,” (PhD dissertation, University of Toronto, 1985). DAI 46A (1985), pdf version.

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19. See Miller, Whitelock, and Waite. See also Max Deutschbein, “Dialektische in der ags. Übersetzung von Bedas Kirchengeschichte,” Beiträge zur Geschichte Deutschen Sprache und Literatur 26 (1901): 169–244; J. Schipper, ed., König Alfreds Übersetzung von Bedas Kirchengeschichte, Bibliothek der angelsächsischen Prosa 4 (Leipzig: Wigand, 1897 and 1899); Frederick Klaeber, “Notes on the Alfredian Version of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People,” PMLA 14 (1899), Appendix I and II: lxxii–lxxiii. 20. These chapters deal with some of Aidan’s miracles, the death of King Sigebert, Fursey’s visions, and Deusdedit in the Latin. Chapters 19–20 appear only in T and B. 21. Miller, ed. The Old English Version, pp. xxiv–xxv. 22. S. Potter, On the Relation of the Old English Bede to Werferth’s Gregory and to Alfred’s Translations, Mémoires de la société royale des sciences de Bohême, Classe des lettres, 1930 (Prague, 1931), p. 33. 23. Both Whitelock and Raymond Grant have demonstrated the unlikelihood that Miller’s [Y] exemplar existed. See Whitelock, “Chapter Headings,” and Raymond Grant, The B Text of the Old English Bede, Costerus, n.s. 73 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1989). 24. Gameson, “The Decoration of the Tanner Bede,” 129. 25. Miller, ed. The Old English Version, pp. xviii–xix. 26. I refer to the main translator as such, the translator of the lists of chapter headings as the second translator, and the section of Book 2 in Ca and O as the third translator. Whitelock, “Chapter-Headings,” p. 270. J.W. Pearce, Francis A. March, and A. Marshall Elliot, “Did King Alfred Translate the Historia Ecclesiastica?” PMLA 7 (1892): vi–x. 27. Dorothy Whitelock, “The Old English Bede,” pp. 227–61. 28. Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe, Visible Song, CSASE 4 (Cambridge: CUP, 1990); Paul Saenger, Space Between Words: The Origins of Silent Reading, Figurae: Reading Medieval Culture (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997). 29. Fred Orton, Ian Wood, and Clare Lees, Fragments of History: Rethinking the Ruthwell and Bewcastle Monuments (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), Chapter 3, “Style, and Seeing . . . As,” pp. 63–80. 30. Whitelock, “The Old English Bede,” p. 245. 31. Whitelock, “The Old English Bede,” p. 245. 32. Donald K. Fry, “Bede Fortunate in His Translators: The Barking Nuns,” in Studies in Earlier Old English Prose, ed. Paul E. Szarmach (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986), p. 345 [345–62]; Stanley B. Greenfield, A Critical History of Old English Literature (New York: New York University Press, 1965), p. 32. 33. H.R. Loyn, “The Term Ealdorman in Translations Prepared at the Time of King Alfred,” English Historical Review 68 (1953): 513–25. 34. Raymond C. St. Jacques, “ ‘Hwilum Word Be Worde, Hwilum Andgit of Andgiete’? Bede’s Ecclesiastical History and Its Old English Translator,” Florilegium 5 (1983): 93 and 90 [85–104].

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35. On the accuracy and specificity of the translation, see Whitelock, Waite, St. Jacques, and Fry. 36. One of the primary claims of a larger project, of which this chapter is a part, is that the main translator understood Bede’s sense of history well. See S.M. Rowley, The Old English Version of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, forthcoming); J.M. Wallace-Hadrill, “Bede and Plummer,” Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People: A Historical Commentary (1988; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), p. xx [xv–xxxv]; Calvin Kendall, “Imitation and the Venerable Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica,” in Saints, Scholars, and Heroes, vol. 1, eds. M.H. King and W.M. Stevens (Collegeville: Hill Monastic Library, Saint John’s Abbey and University, 1979), pp. 145–59; Robert Hanning, The Vision of History in Early Britain (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966), p. 67; H.E.J. Cowdrey, “Bede and the English People,” Journal of Religious History 11.4 (1981): 501–523; Patrick Wormald, “The Venerable Bede and the ‘Church of the English,’ ” in The English Religious Tradition and the Genius of Anglicanism, ed. G. Rowell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 13–32; and Nicholas Howe, Migration and Mythmaking in AngloSaxon England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989). 37. HE 4.24, p. 417. Translation as emended by André Crépin in “Bede and the Vernacular,” p. 183. 38. Robert Stanton, The Culture of Translation in Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2002), p. 82. 39. The locus classicus for the phrasing is Cicero’s De optimo genere oratorum: “non verbum pro verbo necesse habui reddere, sed genus omne verborum vimque servavi” [I did not hold it necessary to render word for word, but I preserved the general style and force of the language]. Quoted by Rita Copeland, Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation in the Middle Ages: Academic Traditions and Vernacular Texts, CSML 11 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 33. 40. Stanton, Culture of Translation, p. 82. 41. Copeland, Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation, pp. 50–55. 42. See Copeland and Stanton. See also Martin Irvine, The Making of Textual Culture: Grammatica and Literary Theory 350–1100, CSML 19 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 43. Henry Sweet, An Anglo-Saxon Reader (Oxford: Oxford University Press/ Clarendon, 1896). 44. Klaeber, “Notes on the Alfredian Version,” p. lxxii. 45. Waite, “The Vocabulary of the Old English Version,” p. 134; HE 1.34. 46. Waite, “The Vocabulary of the Old English Version,” p. 133. 47. Clem Robyns, “Translation and Discursive Identity,” Poetics Today 15:3 (1994): 407. Another example of this is the relatively heavy use of the dative absolute in the OEHE. See Bately, “Alfredian Canon,” p. 114. 48. Paul Ricoeur, “What is a Text?” in A Ricoeur Reader: Reflection and Imagination, ed. Mario J. Valdés (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991), p. 57 [43–64].

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49. Fred C. Robinson, “Old English Literature in Its Most Immediate Context,” in Fred C. Robinson, ed., The Editing of Old English (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 3–24. 50. My literal translation. 51. My literal translation for the Old English in all three passages. 52. My literal translation. 53. My literal translation of both Old English passages. 54. T reads “leofa” for “seolfa,” the other manuscripts read “sylfa.” Miller emends “broðor” to “broðar.” 55. I supply the missing translation for qui usque hodie superest and provide a literal translation of the Old English. 56. My literal translation. I also removed some of Miller’s editorial punctuation. 57. Willi Paul Adams, “The Historian as Translator: An Introduction,” Journal of American History (1999): 1283–88.

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CHAPTER 6 VERNACULAR ENGRAVINGS IN LATE MEDIEVAL ENGLAND Florence Bourgne

Anxious late-medieval vernacular authors saturated their texts with references to engraved writings. These often refer to inscriptions on wax tablets, a fragile albeit professional medium.

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alimpsests are a fairly rare phenomenon in late medieval manuscripts,1 despite the extant evidence of willful defacement. Manuscript Egerton 3245 at the British Library is an instance of such destructive rubbing. The verso of the opening folio still boasts an architectural structure at the top end of the page, filled with a T-shaped rubbed patch clearly meant to accommodate a standard representation of the Trinity, such as those commonly featured in alabaster panels, for example.2 The image of God the Father holding the crucifix in his lap with the Holy Spirit hovering over it has been carefully erased, leaving the prayer written in the space below it: Ffadir sone and holy gost Allmyhtty god sittend in trone Here me lord of myhttis most To the for help I make my mone Thre personis & oo god alone I preyende to þyn heyh mageste Here þat þow graunt me wel to done And on me haue mercy and pite. To þe blissful Trinite be don al reuerens In whos name I begyn þe prik of consciens.

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The original eight-line prayer (in red ink) is supplemented by a dedicatory couplet in black ink in a later, cramped hand. Egerton 3245 is the only copy of these introductory stanzas,3 which were meant as an induction to the Prick of Conscience. If the couplet was indeed added at the time when the picture was erased—as Lollard iconoclasm was becoming more and more virulent—this would prove to be one specific instance in which text proves more durable than image and provides a more acceptable substitute. The scarcity of actual fourteenth-century palimpsests—probably connected to new ways of copying and to more easily available writing medium—is an invitation to explore instead another case in point: the literary representation of palimpsests. This, in turn, entails the examination of two related topics, that of texts described as being written on or as tables, and that of engraving as a more general metaphor for writing. In a context in which a relative abundance of parchment meant that it was somehow easier to preserve and disseminate texts, the phenomenon that Cerquiglini-Toulet has defined as a general melancholy surrounding the activity of writing (whether composing or copying) may come as a surprise.4 Yet, at the close of his Troilus, Chaucer does envisage the risk of miscopying: And for ther is so gret diversite In Englissh and in writyng of oure tonge, So prey I God that non myswrite the, Ne the mysmetre for defaute of tonge.5

At the close of the poem, following its resolution as Troilus ascends the spheres, textual instability is associated with the very common scribal phenomenon of dialectal rewriting, and finally remains as the only source of anguish. A similar anxiety can be traced in Chaucer’s address to his personal scribe, Adam: “Chaucers Wordes unto Adam, his owne Scriveyn” Adam scriveyn, if ever it thee bifalle Boece or Troylus for to wryten newe, Under thy long lokkes thou most have the scalle, But after my makyng thow wryte more trewe; So ofte adaye I mot thy werk renewe, It to correcte and eke to rubbe and scrape, And al is thorugh thy negligence and rape.6

Following Linne Mooney’s discoveries, we know now that Chaucer did indeed employ a London scribe called Adam Pynkhurst.7 We can

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discard uneasy metaphorical readings of this stanza, in which Chaucer’s scribe was the first man on earth. Rubbing and scraping can become straightforward allusions again to the activity of an actual scribe. Chaucer’s insistence on the risks and dangers inherent in textual transmission resonates with most Ricardian literature, in particular the Gawain corpus. The opening of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight serves as a reminder that alliteration guarantees the integrity of the text and allows its oral retelling and preservation: Forþi an aunter in erde I attle to schawe, Þat a selly in siзt summe men hit holden And an outtrage awenture of Arthurez wonderez. If зe wyl lysten þis laye bot on littel quile, I schal telle hit astit, as I in toun herde, With tonge. As hit is stad and stoken In stori stif and stronge, With lele letteres loken, In londe so hatz ben longe.8

Oral poetry appears miraculously aproblematic; it is felt to be a stable medium for preserving stories, which circulate freely from teller to teller. We know that the whole corpus of the Gawain manuscript was compiled quite carefully despite the rough quality of the script. Somebody took great pains to commit these poems to writing, and yet the programmatic opening of Sir Gawain offers a different self- definition of alliterative poetry as a proper oral genre. Storing narratives in one’s memory, and reciting and retelling them at will, seems like an ideal situation, in contrast to the potential dangers facing written texts. The passage on Daniel and the writing on the wall at the court of Belshazzar is an ideal starting point, with its insistence on “graven,” “rasped,“ and “scraped” inscriptions. In þe palays pryncipale, vpon þe playn wowe, In contrary of þe candelstik, þer clerest hit schyned, Þer apered a paume, with poyntel in fyngres, Þat was grysly and gret, and grymly he wrytes; Non oþer forme bot a fust faylande þe wryste Pared on þe parget, purtrayed lettres. [ . . . ] Ay biholdand þe honde til hit hade al graven, And rasped on þe roз woзe runisch sauez. When hit þe scrypture hade scraped wyth a scrof penne As a coltour in clay cerves þe for зes,

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Þenne hit vanist verayly and voyded of sy зt, Bot þe lettres bileued ful large vpon plaster.9

This retelling of the biblical episode in Cleanness insists on the fact that the inscription on the wall is an engraving, made with a stylus, a “poyntel.” The same word is used by Chaucer in his Boece to render the Latin stylus: “I merkid my weply compleynte with office of poyntel” (Book I, prosa 1, §2). Yet the illuminator who created the cycle of illustrations for the Pearl manuscript chose to ignore these markers.10 Instead, he depicted a rather enormous hand and what looks clearly like a pen, meant to write with ink: the inscription is performed on a scroll, signaled by elaborate convoluted ends. This departure from the text of the poem is in accordance with two separate traditions. One may be ascribed to theological issues: the word of God is conventionally lent authority by being represented on a scroll. The other is purely formal: in the late fourteenth century, inscriptions on walls, whether woven into a tapestry or painted a fresco, were almost invariably framed and made to look like writing on a scroll of parchment. The superior authority of the roll over every other medium is confirmed by an occurrence in Lydgate’s Temple of Glas. As Lydgate describes a worshipper of Venus, he explains that the lady’s garment is covered “in sondri rolles”: And so þis ladi, benigne and humble of chere, Kneling I saugh, al clad in grene and white, Tofore Venus, goddes of al delite, Enbrouded al with stones & perre So richeli, þat ioi it was to se, Wiþ sondri rolles on hir garnement, Forto expoune þe trouth of hir entent, And shew fulli, þat for hir humbilles, And for hir vertu, and hir stabilnes, That she was rote of womanli plesaunce.11

The scrolls provide a truthful exegesis of the goddess’s identity: her hidden virtues and symbolic significance are thus made manifest. In Cleanness, having performed this miraculous act of writing/engraving, the hand disappears and only the mysterious letters remain. The inscription is begging to be read, deciphered, and commented upon, and Daniel will duly be summoned. Indeed in the illumination he is already on hand, receiving orders from the king. A courtly appetite for enigmas is also rampant in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: the court of King Arthur revels in the telling of stories around Yuletide, and is presented

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with the enigmatic challenge of the Green Knight. The king faces yet another type of marvel begging to be deciphered and explained away, at the court’s expense perhaps. Another corpus of equally mysterious inscriptions, those belonging to a distant past, is mentioned in later alliterative texts such as St. Erkenwald: The sperle of þe spelunke þat sparde hit o-lofte Was metely made of þe marbre and menskefully planede And þe bordure enbelicit wyt bryзt golde lettres Bot roynyshe were þe resones þat þer on row stoden Fulle verray were þe vigures þer auisyde hom mony Bot alle muset hit to mouthe and quat hit mene shulde Mony clerkes in þat clos wyt crownes ful brode Þer besiet hom a-boute noзt to brynge hom in wordes.12

The true (“verray”) letters on the tomb slab are beautiful (“bry зt”) and all the more fascinating as they cannot be made into intelligible words, for they prove impossible to pronounce (“to mouthe”). Written words are “roynyshe,” enigmatic and mysterious like runic inscriptions. By contrast, orality, or rather live letters, bring on the poem’s resolution; St. Erkenwald is able to understand the inscription by direct dialogue with the body of the ancient Saxon who is buried in the tomb; the salvation of the dead man’s soul is brought about by the bishop of London’s prayers. Textual, literal survival in Ricardian poetry relied upon two distinct strategies: passing on a text thanks to an efficient scribe’s pen, or maintaining the fiction of an oral transmission. None of these texts actually consider the eventuality of material destruction: the rubbing and scraping is meant to correct the text, not to erase it. Yet this fear had already been formulated in various versions of the Life of Adam and Eve.13 The earliest extant rendition, from the Auchinleck manuscript, dates from 1330–40.14 The second one, entitled the Canticum de Creatione, also survives in only one manuscript, Trinity College Oxford MS 57, datable to 1375. A much later prose version also circulated as part of the Gilte Legende.15 In all three versions, Eve requires Seth to write a life of his parents, a vita whose purpose is mainly to serve as a warning to future generations. In Auchinleck, this section reads: & þou, Seþ, for ani þing Ich comand þe on mi blisceing Þat þi fader liif be write, & min also, eueri smite, [ . . . ] Þat þo þat be now зong childre

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Mai it see, & her elder, & oþer þat here after be bore, Hou we han wrou зt here bifore, Þat þai mowe taken ensaumple of ous & amenden oзain Jhesus.’ [ . . . ] Þo Seþ hadde writen Adames liif, & Eues, þat was Adames wiif, Riзt in þilke selue stede Þer Adam was won to bide his bede, In þilke stede þe bok he leyd As wise men er þis han yseyd Þer Adam was won to biden his bede, & leued it in þilke stede.16

In this, the earliest extant version, Seth produces a book and hides it where his father used to pray. This book happens almost in retrospect to be in stone; it survives the Flood and is discovered by Solomon: Long after N[o]es f lod was go, Salamon þe king com þo, Þat was air of Dauid lond, & Adames liif þer he fond, & al in ston writen it was, & damaghed non letter þer nas. For alle þat euer Salamon couþe Þink in hert or speke wiþ mouþe, On word he no couþe wite Of alle þat euer was þer write; He no couþe o word vnderstond Þat Seþ hadde writen wiþ his hond.17

The enigmatic engraving is interpreted with the help of an angel: “Here, þer þis writeing is, Riзt in þis selue stede Adam was wont to bid his bede & here þou schalt a temple wirche, Þat schal be cleped holi chirche Þer men schal bid holy bede, As Adam dede in þis stede.”18

The later versions translate a different Latin branch of the Adamic legend. Eve requests a specific and mixed medium for the writing of the text. To survive trial by water and by fire, two types of tablets must be

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used: tablets of stone to withstand the water, and clay tablets that can survive firing. Eue to Seth þus gan seye: “Tak & make tables tweye Of al oure lyf anon, Tweye of erthe & tweye of ston, writ þeron oure lyf anon, For we haue had here; For longe er domesday falle Þis worlde shel ben fordon alle By water or by fere Зif it be by water fordon, Þanne shollen þe tables of ston Lasten wiþouten lye ; Зif it þorghe fer be broЗt to nou Зt, Þanne sholle þe tables of erthe wroЗt Lasten sikerlye.”19

All of the later versions also mention that Seth created his text “without travail,” because an angel guided his hand; his animated finger inscribed the text: Þo wroЗte Seth his moderes wil And þe tables gan fulfil Wiþ ded and wiþ þou Зt. Salamon, þe wyse man, Fond þe tables longe after þan And he God bisou Зt To shewen him wiþouten mys What bytokneþ þe tablys, Or who þat hem sou Зt. God þo sent him his angel And tolde him al fayre and wel How þat þe З were wroЗt, And what tokne þat it was; And þo “archilaykas” Salamon dede hem calle, Þat is to sayn : “wiþoute trauaylle,” And wiþouten wit saunfayle Seth wrot hem alle, For an angel held his hond ryЗt.20

In each version the text survives and eventually marks the spot where Adam used to pray, thus indicating where the Temple must be built. The

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late prose version reiterates every stage of the narrative: Therfore heere, my sonne Seeth : make tables of stoon and tables of shynyng clay (or) erthe, & write ther-inne the lyf of youre fader and of me, and also the thynges that ye haue herde and seen of vs. For whenne god shal iugge alle oure kynde by water, the tables of erthe wil lose and the tables of stoon wil dwelle ; forsothe, whenne god wil iugge mankyde by fire, thanne wil the tables of stoon lose and the tables of erthe endure.” [ . . . ] Thanne Seeth made tables of stoone and tables of shynyng erthe, & thanne he bigan to make the shappe of the lettres & wrote his fader lyf and his moder, as he had herd hem tolde, and also þat he had seen with his eyghen, and thanne he putte thilke tables, when thei were writen, in his fadres hous into his oratorye, where Adam was wont for to preye to oure lord god. The which tables were founden aftir Noee flode & seen of many oone, but thei were noght redde. So after wyse Salamon hadde seen thise tables writen, he prayed to god that he myght haue witte to vndirstonde the thynges ywriten in thoo tables. Thanne appered to hym goddes aungel, seyeng : “I am the aungel that helde the honde of Seeth whenne his fyngre wrothe this with yrne in thise tables. Now herken knowyng of this writyng, that thow it vnderstonde where thise tables were. Forsothe, thei were in Adam prayeng-place where he and his wyfe were wonte to preye to oure lord god ; and therfore it behouith to the that thow make there prayeng to god.” And Salamon cleped thise lettres Achiliacos, þat is to seye with-oute techyng of lyppes writen with fynger of Seeth, the aungel of god holdyng his honde.21

As all three versions engage with their Latin sources, they endeavor to counter a growing anxiety over the material fragility of the text. Showing how Seth must carve in stone his newly composed Life of Adam so that it survives the Flood and reaches Solomon ref lects poorly on the durability of parchment copies. The very matter of the texts draws attention to—indeed engineers—the notion that they have entrusted their survival to a f limsy medium. The very same idea is put to use in a political song attacking Edward II and accusing him of having breached the Magna Carta. The song is extant in several copies, including the Auchinleck manuscript.22 In the song, the charter is destroyed because it is put too close to the fire after having been made of wax. This ur-destruction spawns the destruction and decay of England: L’en puet fere et defere Ceo fait il trop souent It nis nouther wel ne faire Þerfore Engelond is shent Nostre prince de Engletere

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par le consail de sa gent At Westminster after the feire Maden a gret parlement La chartre fet de cyre Ieo lenteinte & bien le crey It was holde to neih the fire And is molten al awey. Ore ne say mes que dire, Tout i va a Tripolay Hundred chapitle court and shire al hit goth a deuel way.23

On the contrary, in Reson and Sensuallyte, a text engraved deeply in stone stands the test of time and remains intelligible; the ekphrastic evocation of the well of Narcissus in the Garden of Pleasure brooks no real enigma. And first I saugh in what wyse— By lettres graven in the stoon, Which declarede me anoon The maner hooly and the cas— How Narcisus slay[e]n was And his woful Auenture, Which no wyght koude tho recure. And whan I had the lettres rad, Which in the stonys hard and sad Wer profoundely and depe y- grave, The scripture for to save Wryte of olde antyquyte, To conserve the beaute, I wexe astonyed in partye And abasshed sodenly, Touchyng the pereyl of the welle Of which ye han herd me telle.24

Ancient inscriptions are (t)here to be deciphered and parsed without any difficulty. John Lydgate, in his Troy Book, displays similar confidence when he states that Priamus, as he rebuilds Troy, makes sure he hires craftsmen whose works of art will never fade nor decay: He sent also for euery ymagour, Boþe in entaille, & euery purtreyour Þat coude drawe, or with colour peynt With hewes fresche, þat þe werke nat feynt;

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And swiche as coude with countenaunces glade Make an ymage þat wil neuere fade: To counterfet in metal, tre, or stoon Þe sotil werke of Pigmaleoun, Or of Appollo, þe whiche as bokis telle, In ymagerye alle oþer dide excelle; [ . . . ] With square toures set on euery syde. At whos corners, of verray pompe & pride, Þe werkmen han, with sterne & fel visages, Of riche entaille, set vp gret ymages, Wrou зt out of ston, þat neuer ar like to fayle, Ful coriously enarmed for batayle.25

This very type of proud image-making comes under Langland’s attack in Piers Plowman: “We han a wyndowe a worchynge wol stande vs ful heye Wolde зe glase þat gable and graue ther зoure name” [ . . . ] Ac god to alle good folk swich gravynge defendeth, To writen on wyndowes of eny wel dedes, An auntur pruyde be paynted there and pomp of the world ; [ . . . ] Forthy, leue lordes, leueth suche writynges ; God in the gospel suche grauynge nou зt allueth.26

Lady Mede is quite prepared to have the parishioners pay for vanity stained-glass windows in which their acts and their names will be remembered; a strict Langlandian digression reminds the reader that such “engraving” is forbidden. Lydgate also uses a spiritual image similar to that of the tables engraved by Seth without effort because his finger was guided by God. In The Life of our Lady (c.1416), God is described as one capable of engraving without a stylus: And he that graved of his grete myght Withe outyn poyntell, in the hard stone And in the tables, with lettres clere and bryght His ten preceptez and byddynges eueryche one The same lorde, of his power aloon Hath made this mayde, here oon erthe lowe A chylde conceyve, and no man to knawe.27

Needless to say, the divinely scripted text survives clear and bright. And yet, despite this fifteenth- century show of confidence, the evidence remains: literary and business texts were far more often written on wax than deeply engraved in stone.28

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Most medieval writers carried around one or several wax tablets: thin hollowed slabs, made of wood or sometimes ivory, filled with a layer of beeswax to form a surface for writing. Although many tablets must have been single sheets of wax-covered wood, it was more convenient to have multiple leaves (most commonly diptychs, but also triptychs, etc., as many as eight or more). The writing surface was increased and—with the hard surfaces outside and wax surfaces inside—the writing was protected from accidental damage. The wax was dyed, in red, or preferably in green for ease on the eyes. Styluses were often made of aesthetically pleasing materials including wood, ivory, bone, and even precious metals, and carved in all sorts of curious and fancy shapes. The blunt edge was used for rubbing out any unwanted text. A number of inscribed wax tablets are extant, mostly used for accounting purposes. Wax tablets were favored in some areas of business, for example in the salt industry and in shipping businesses, because neither parchment nor medieval paper could stand the damp. These surviving tablets are almost systematically oblong, and quite often round-topped. As Richard and Mary Rouse point out, wax is never written on in the Hebrew Bible. It is always mentioned as something that melts ( Judith 16.18, Psalm 21.15, Psalm 57.9, etc.). So technically, the word tabula in the Vulgate refers to tablets of boxwood, or bronze; of course the most famous biblical tablets, the tables of the law, were explicitly made of stone. However, the Middle Ages was a wax tablet culture, and most medieval readers of the Bible in the West automatically assumed that tabula meant wax tablet and interpreted the text accordingly. This ambiguity is ref lected in the evolution of the representation of the tables of the law in medieval English art. In the Old English Hexateuch (c.1025–30),29 on fol. 136v, the tables are represented in the hands of horned Moses, who is shown writing in a square-topped diptych for the benefit of the Hebrew people. On fol. 6v, the authoritative nature of the tables is asserted: God is warning Adam and the newly created Eve by holding up a similar object. It is square in form, and I do think that we are here exactly halfway between the representation of a parchment codex and a pair of magnified wax tablets. In one of the two-tier, full-page illuminations of the Bury Bible,30 Moses is shown twice: once displaying an open codex, once holding folded round-topped tablets. On folio 5 of the Winchester Bible (c.1160–75), the same type of duplication is used: Moses holds or is handed down tablets, but at the same time the word of God is directed toward him by means of a descending scroll.31 The same device is used again in yet another Genesis illumination by the Master of Simon of St. Albans, working in Normandy c.1175–1200.32 In a slightly later illumination by William of

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Brailles,33 Moses is shown half-length in the bottom compartment of a historiated letter I and is handed down the tables of the law. In all three illuminations the tables are green—perhaps the most common color used to dye wax so that it does not spoil too quickly. In the fourteenth-century Holkham Bible,34 Moses holds a roundtopped green-tinted wax tablet. On fol. 27v, the Jews are literally shown with the tables of the law on their forehead, i.e. phylacteries traditionally worn by orthodox Jews. I will not dwell on the anti-Semitic potential of the round-topped tablet. The topic has been repeatedly rehashed since Ruth Mellinkoff ’s seminal studies.35 My contention here is that obsessive reference to round-topped tablets is first and foremost an allusion to a type of inscribed table everybody was well-acquainted with—wax tablets. The same obsession with tables and tablets can be sensed in three passages from the Wycliffite Bible, in which tablets feature prominently:36 Thi twei tetis ben as twey kidis, twynnes of a capret, that ben fed in lilies, til the dai sprynge, and shadewis ben bowid doun. twey tetis ben twey tablis of witnessing, of whiche the mylk of kunnyng and deuocioun is sokun out; til the day, of the newe testament; schadewis, for the figuris of the elde lawe ceessen in the newe testament, of which thei weren schadewe. (Song of Solomon, 4.5–6) Al зifte and wickidnesse schal be don awei; and feith schal stonde in to the world. Al зifte; зouun for distriyng of ri зtfulnesse, and wickidnesse doon for зifte. schal be doon awey; [ . . . ] so that no thing schal appere of her possessiouns and boost, as no thing apperith in tablis doon awey. (Ecclesiasticus 40.12) and Y schal do awei Jerusalem, as tablis ben wont to be doon awei; and Y schal do awey and turne it, & Y schal lede ful ofte the poyntel on the face therof. (4 Kings 21.13)

The last quotation provides a literal rendering of Jerome’s own interpretation of the destruction of Jerusalem. Jerome himself added “& Y schal lede ful ofte the poyntel on the face therof ” to insist that Jerusalem’s face (or the tablet’s) is to be obliterated by the scraping with the blunt point of the stylus. In the Song of Solomon and Ecclesiasticus, the gloss deliberately introduces the image of tables. In the first case, the gloss alludes to the tables of the law. In the gloss on Ecclesiasticus the image of erased tablets points us in the direction of wax tablets again. Before moving on, it is worth revisiting some of the texts mentioned in the opening section in view of that invasion of tables, and more specifically wax diptychs or polyptychs. Because wax tablets were an ordinary everyday object, we can see why the illustrator of Cleanness decided to move away from the notion of engraving and chose instead to portray a hand writing with pen and ink. Because professionals almost systematically

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used wax tablets in pairs, we can understand why Eve in the Canticum de Creatione suggests that two pairs of tablets are going to be made. I suggest furthermore that familiar wax diptychs may have prompted the association of tables with the two breasts in the Song of Songs. The fact that the Cleanness illuminator chose to depict a hand writing in ink rather than engraving with a stylus also suggests the existence of a strict but unspoken hierarchy between modes of writing. Writing in ink is meant for important texts, and indeed for important authors. In the Cuthbercht Gospels, Mark is shown with his ink pen resting on the page, and lifting a corner of the page, signaling ostentatiously that what he is writing in is indeed a parchment codex.37 In a tenth- century single leaf kept in the Trier Diocesan Library, Gregory the Great is shown, in the traditional way for artists depicting him, as being inspired by the Holy Spirit in the shape of a dove.38 His authoritative fingering of a codex resting on a pulpit contrasts with the groveling of his younger scribe, who proffers a square tablet such as those used by schoolboys throughout the Middle Ages and well into the sixteenth century. The wax tablet is for schoolboys and ink for the men. Two competing attitudes are displayed in two illuminations from the middle of the twelfth century. In an illuminated letter P from the Dover Bible, Mark is seated with a wax tablet in the right hand.39 In his left hand, he is holding up his stylus for inspection. Despite his apparent lack of inscribing activity, this authorial portrait stands at the beginning of Mark’s Gospels, which are fully written out, effortlessly it seems. In the frontispiece to the Eadwine Psalter, the scribe Eadwine is pictured leaning over a parchment codex, with pen and knife in hand.40 The surrounding inscription proclaims him the prince of scribes. He uses pen and ink. Yet Mark’s seated calm contrasts with the crouched position of the toiling monk whose gaze is fixed on the page. Later authorial portraits make greater use of the ink and pen as authorizing features. In a Remède de Fortune illumination,41 Machaut is shown seated on the ground in a park or meadow planted with a few trees, writing a lay along a horizontal scroll. The miniature is preceded by the rubric “Comment lamant fait vn lay de son sentement,” which announces both the image of the writing author and the following score and text of the song. In a frontispiece prefacing a copy of her works,42 Christine de Pizan is depicted seated at her desk with a dog at her feet. She is writing away in a neatly ruled and already bound parchment codex. Both French authors, whether sitting in a carefully manicured meadow or in a Gothic loggia, are shown writing on parchment (hence in ink). These authorizing representations had no room for tentative and fragile wax tablets.

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Another change in writing habits toward the close of the medieval period may be witnessed in the evolution of the scene in which Zachary, who has been struck dumb, writes out the name of his newborn, John the Baptist. The naming takes place a few days after the birth, according to the Jewish custom; family and friends want to name the child after his father. In the Latin Vulgate, Zachary writes out the name of his son on pugillares, i.e., tablets that can be held in hand. In early illuminations, Zachary invariably writes out the name on a pair of joined tablets, with a stylus. In the Caligula Troper (c.1050),43 for instance, the square tablets are brownish and both stylus and writing are in white, perhaps to indicate that the inscription is not a regular ink-on-parchment text. In the Holkham Bible (c.1327–1340),44 the lady on the right is adamant (she is holding out a scroll bearing her spoken words) that the little boy will have Zachary as a name (“Lenfant ara a non Zacharie”). Zachary is represented twice. On the left he is sitting down and being ordered to speak out by the crowd (again by a scroll-inscribed utterance). When he stands, he uses a decorated pair of round-topped tablets on which he writes in black to insist “nomez lenfant Ihoan.” Some late representations of the naming of John offer realistic and unambiguous renderings of the tablets. In the Petites Heures du Duc de Berry (c.1375),45 the tablets are in red wax. In the same scene painted nearly a century later by Jean Fouquet for the Heures d’Étienne Chevalier (c.1450),46 the tablets have become elongated and whitish. I doubt whether Fouquet really intended to depict wax tablets. He seems instead to be aiming at a ledger-book format, which is a fairly common standard for fifteenthcentury codices. This move is duplicated in the gradual shift from wax tablet and stylus to pen and ink in three written versions of the naming scene: in the Cursor Mundi (Southern version), in a retelling of the Gospels in the Vernon manuscript, and in a late fifteenth-century manuscript of the vernacular Gilte Legend, respectively. In the early Cursor Mundi, Zachary takes tables and stylus in hand to write his decision: Þenne loked aftir sir zakary Tables & poyntel tyte He bigon þe name to write And wroot as þe aungel bad Ion his name shulde be rad47

In the fourteenth-century Vernon manuscript, the vernacular narrator clearly hesitates between a single table and a pair of tablets, perhaps a sign that the latter is a fairly common and familiar object, which comes

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naturally to mind and displaces the Latin singular pugillar. Vernacular tablets come necessarily in a pair: Zachary looks for one “table,” but then writes on “þe tabletz”: So Zakarie• þe word heo brouhte And bad him sigge• what he þouhte• And he a table• sone souhte And þeron з þe nome wrouhte ¶ On þe tabletz he wrot anon• þe childes nome• he wrot Ion•48

All ambiguity disappears in the late fifteenth-century rendering of the Gilte Legende. The new father reaches very naturally for pen and ink when it comes to writing: and then thaye askid the fader zachary and he toke penne and inke & wrote for he myght not yet speke but he wrote Iohannes est nomen eius.49

The trouble of course with writing in ink as opposed to engraving is that one must choose a color to write in. The terms illumyne, colours of rhetoric have been abundantly commented upon, particularly in the writings of the fifteenth-century Chaucerians, Hoccleve and Lydgate.50 I would like instead to look at an earlier hesitation, namely in the textual tradition of the Charters of Christ, for which there is an excellent parallel-text edition.51 Here are the relevant sections from versions of the Long Charter A-text: Here now & yhe sall wyten How þis charter was wryten /Opon my neese was made þe ynk With Iewes spyttyng on me to stynk Þe pennes þat þe letter was with wryten Was of skourges þat I was with smyten.52 /Of my bloode made þei ynke.53 /Vpon my face was made þe ynke With Iewes spotel on me to stynke.54

and of the Long Charter B-text: Зe þat þis boke wyll rede or se [ . . . ]

For З e shull here a-none ryght How Зour sauyour speketh to Зou as-ty Зte Wordus of a charter þat he hath wrowЗth.55

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To make a chartour by-houyþ many þyng As parchement pen and ynke Wex and seele wytnyssith also Of my face fill downe the ynke Whan thornys on my hed gan synke.56

In this corpus of metaphorical charters, the body of Christ is stretched instead of a parchment on the cross, and written upon using scourges.57 The only problem: what type of ink is being used? The latest versions (B-text) all agree that Christ’s blood is the proper medium; some even consider that the Charter is now a “boke” in itself. In the early versions of the A-text, written as early as 1350, the ink was made on the knees of Christ, probably suggesting that dirt was mixed with spit as a binding medium. Then gradually, logically, the words turned into a blood-red inscription. I would like to conclude with a series of cross-pollinations between competing representations of the written text, starting first with two instances of fourteenth- century graffiti, both found in churches.58 The first is from St. Mary & St. Clement in Clavering (Essex), and is a careful crafting of the phrase Amor vincit omnia, skillfully lettered (Figure 6.1).

Figure 6.1

Amor vincit omnia.

Source: Graffito from St. Mary & St. Clement, Clavering (Essex), after 1360. Drawing by Florence Bourgne.

The motto, from Virgil’s Eclogues, is now inseparable from Chaucer’s cruel depiction of Eglentyne the prioress, but when it was painstakingly engraved in the wall of a church it may have referred either to the saving powers of caritas . . . or more prosaically to courtly love. The script is similar to a Roman type and suggests formality and grandeur. Because of the omnipresence of material wax tablets as inscribing devices, because of their use in biblical illustrations, engraving could be a glorified, spiritual medium—yet this is a mere graffito. Even more ordinary graffiti could also be found, direct messages replete with allusions to dicing and love songs. In Lydgate (Suffolk), St. Mary’s church harbors a rebus message to a beloved lady (Figure 6.2): Well ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ dy -yne Well fa-re-mi-la dy cater-yne Well fare my lady Katherine.

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Figure 6.2 “Well fare my lady Katherine.” Source: Graffito from St. Mary, Lydgate (Suffolk), after 1370. Drawing by Florence Bourgne.

Here is a lowly relative of the inscription, a particularly debased engraving worthy of a grubby wax tablet. Yet, because of the repeated use of the term “table,” “tables” in biblical and related texts (particularly to mean the tables of the law), the act of shaping a text in the form of a table, as in the Vernon Paternoster,59 could signify a superior type of engraving. The text is arranged into a square that fills almost the whole folio—and the Vernon manuscript is a massive codex. The Vernon Paternoster is shaped into a grid of connecting squares, rectangles, and roundels. Its purpose is literally to align the seven petitions comprising the Lord’s Prayer with the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, the seven virtues, and the seven deadly sins. By using alternately red and black ink, connecting phrases, as well as different modules and types of script, the result is a fully bilingual (Latin/English) tabular rendition of the contents. The square form of what Avril Henry sees as a “banner” is also quite reminiscent of a schoolboy’s square wax tablet, which could be divided into neat little compartments to hold various letters, etc. It thus seems that the humble wax tablet, with its potential for endless rubbing and reinscription, as well as its lofty biblical associations, accompanied the development of a whole array of inscriptions: graffiti, captions, tabular writings, and so forth. Its constant presence at the side of medieval intellectuals made them acutely aware of the scribal danger of erasure. Literary texts naturally evolved and proffered various strategies to counter the risk of becoming palimpsest medium, either by stressing the metaphor of writing as inscription/engraving or by glorifying the

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very material act of putting quill to parchment—yet the shadow image of the f limsiest of all writing media, the wax tablet, remained.

Notes 1. Despite this paucity of material, I have deliberately eschewed a purely metaphorical treatment of the question of the palimpsest. A good starting point for such an abstract enquiry could be Willie van Peer’s “Mutilated Signs: Notes Towards a Literary Palæography,” Poetics Today 18.1 (1997): 33–57, which looks at various modes of deletion and their symbolic and philosophical interpretations. 2. This page can be viewed in the British Library’s Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts, http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/. For a recent study on English alabasters, see Francis W. Cheetham, Alabaster Images of Medieval England (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2003). 3. Cf. Julia Boffey and A.S.G. Edwards, A New Index of Middle English Verse (London: British Library, 2005), nos. 790.5 & 3769.8. Hereafter abbreviated NIMEV. 4. See Jacqueline Cerquiglini-Toulet, La Couleur de la mélancolie. La fréquentation des livres au XIVe siècle (Paris: Hatier, 1993). 5. Geoffrey Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde: A New Edition of “The Book of Troilus,” ed. B.A. Windeatt (London: Longman, 1984), Book V, ll. 1793–96. 6. All subsequent quotations from Chaucer are from The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry Benson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). 7. Linne R. Mooney, “Chaucer’s Scribe,” Speculum 81.1 (2006): 97–138. 8. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, lines 27–35 (my italics). This and all subsequent quotations from the Pearl poems are from Malcolm Andrew and Ronald Waldron, eds., The Poems of the Pearl Manuscript: Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1987). 9. Cleanness, lines 1531–36 and 1544–46 (my italics). 10. British Library, MS Cotton Nero A. x, fol. 60b. This illumination can be viewed together with the whole iconographical cycle of the codex in “Images Online” on the British Library’s website (http://www.imagesonline.bl.uk, image no. 022692). 11. John Lydgate, Temple of Glas, ed. Josef Schick, EETS e.s. 60 (1891), p. 12, ll. 298–307 (my italics). 12. St. Erkenwald, ll. 49–56 (my italics). Quoted from Malcolm Andrew, Ronald Waldron, and Clifford Peterson, eds., The Complete Works of the Pearl Poet, trans. and intro. Casey Finch (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); in this bilingual edition, St. Erkenwald is reproduced from the 1977 edition by Clifford Peterson. 13. A recent edition of the two fourteenth- century versions is Brian Murdoch and J.A. Tasioulas, eds., The Apocryphal Lives of Adam and Eve. Edited from

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14. 15. 16.

17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

27. 28.

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the Auchinleck Manuscript and from Trinity College, Oxford, MS 57 (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2002); all following data on the various versions is taken from the volume’s very thorough introduction. NIMEV no. 43. Cf. R.E. Lewis, N.F. Blake, and A.S.G. Edwards, Index of Printed Middle English Prose (New York: Garland, 1985), no. 25. Lines 613–16, 627–32, 681–88 (my italics), from David Burnley and Alison Wiggins, eds., The Auchinleck Manuscript, National Library of Scotland ( July 5, 2003), www.nls.uk/auchinleck/. Burnley and Wiggins, eds., The Auchinleck Manuscript, ll. 691–702 (my italics). Burnley and Wiggins, eds., The Auchinleck Manuscript, ll. 714–20. Murdoch and Tasioulas, eds., The Apocryphal Lives, ll. 898–912 (my italics). Murdoch and Tasioulas, eds., The Apocryphal Lives, ll. 931–49 (my italics). Carl Horstmann, ed., “The Lyfe of Adam aus MS Bodley 596 (c.1430),” Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen 74 (1885): 53 [345–65]. Printed by R.H. Robbins in his Historical Poems of the XIVth and XVth Centuries (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), pp. 140–3. Burnley and Wiggins, eds., The Auchinleck Manuscript, ll. 1–16 (my italics). John Lydgate, Reson and Sensuallyte, ed. Ernst Sieper, EETS e.s. 84 (1901), p. 149, ll. 5683–99 (my italics). John Lydgate, Lydgate’s Troy Book, ed. H. Bergen. EETS e.s. 97 (1906), Book II, pp. 159, ll. 507–516 and pp. 161–62, ll. 607–612 (my italics). William Langland, Piers Plowman: An Edition of the C-Text, ed. Derek Pearsall (London: Arnold, 1978), Passus 3, ll. 51–52, 68–70, 73–74 (my italics). John Lydgate, The Minor Poems of John Lydgate, ed. Henry Noble MacCracken, EETS e.s. 107 (1911), Book II, p. 367, ll. 792–98. The data in the following paragraphs is derived from: - Olga Weijers, ed. Vocabulaire du livre et de l’écriture au moyen âge, CIVICIMA: Études sur le vocabulaire intellectuel du Moyen Âge 2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1989), in particular the essays by Pierre Gasnault, “Les supports et les instruments de l’écriture à l’époque médiévale,” pp. 20–33, and Richard H. and Mary A. Rouse, “The Vocabulary of Wax Tablets,” pp. 220–32; - Richard H. and Mary A. Rouse, “Wax Tablets,” Language and Communication 9 (1989): 175–191; - Richard H. and Mary A. Rouse, “The Vocabulary of Wax Tablets,” Harvard Library Bulletin n.s. 1.3 (1990): 12–19; - Elisabeth Lalou, ed., Les Tablettes à écrire de l’Antiquité à l’époque moderne, Bibliologia 12 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1992), which is most helpful as it contains many photographs of extant tablets, many with inscribed accounts.

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29. Cf. The Old English Illustrated Hexateuch, EEMF 18 (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger, 1974). At the time of the conference, I had not been able to consult Benjamin C. Withers, The Illustrated Old English Hexateuch, Cotton Claudius B. iv. The Frontier of Seeing and Reading (London: British Library, 2007). 30. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 2.1, fol. 94. Cf. The Cambridge Illuminations: Ten Centuries of Book Production in the Medieval West (London: Harvey Miller, 2005), cat. no. 19; illustration p. 82. 31. Cf. Clare Donovan, The Winchester Bible (London: British Library, 1993). 32. Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, lat. 74, fol. 2v. The image of this folio can be viewed in the BnF’s “Mandragore” database at http://mandragore.bnf.fr. 33. Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College, MS 350/567. Cf. The Cambridge Illuminations, cat. no. 30, illustration p. 99. 34. British Library, Additional MS 47682, fol. 10. Cf. The Holkham Bible Picture-Book: A Facsimile, commentary by Michelle Brown (London: British Library, 2007). 35. Cf. Ruth Mellinkoff, “The Round-Topped Tablets of the Law: Sacred Symbol and Emblem of Evil,” Journal of Jewish Art 1 (1974): 28–43. 36. The Wycliffite Bible is quoted from Josiah Forshall and Frederick Madden, eds., The Holy Bible in the Earliest English Versions, Made from the Latin by John Wycliffe and His Followers: The Middle English Compendium; http://name.umdl.umich.edu/AFZ9170.0001.001. Italics are used for the glosses. 37. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. Lat. 1224, fol. 71. Cf. Michelle P. Brown, ed., Manuscripts from the Anglo-Saxon Age (London: British Library, 2007), p. 33. 38. Cf. Otto Pächt, L’Enluminure médiévale (Paris: Macula, 1997), p. 184, fig. 91. 39. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 4, fol. 221v. Cf. The Cambridge Illuminations, cat. 21, p. 86. 40. Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R.17.1. See Margaret Gibson, T.A. Heslop, and Richard W. Pfaff, eds., The Eadwine Psalter: Text, Image, and Monastic Culture in Twelfth-Century Canterbury, Publications of the MHRA 14 (London: MHRA, 1992). See also André Crépin, “Le ‘Psautier d’Eadwine’: l’Angleterre pluri- culturelle,” in Journée d’études anglo-normandes organisée par l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, Palais de l’Institut, 20 juin 2008, eds. André Crépin and Jean Leclant (Paris: De Boccard, 2009), pp. 139–70. 41. Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, fr. 1586, fol. 26. A description may be accessed via the BnF’s “Mandragore” database at http://mandragore.bnf. fr. Cf. Robert Bartlett, Medieval Panorama (London: Thames and Hudson, 2001), p. 222, fig. 3. 42. London, British Library, MS Harley 4431, fol. 4. This illumination can be viewed in “Images Online” on the British Library’s website (http://www.

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43. 44.

45.

46.

47.

48.

49. 50.

51.

52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57.

58.

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imagesonline.bl.uk, image no. 067363). Cf. Bartlett, Medieval Panorama, p. 222, fig. 1. London, British Library, MS Cotton Caligula A. xiv, fol. 20v. Cf. Brown, ed. Manuscripts from the Anglo-Saxon Age, p. 168. British Library, Additional MS 47682, fol. 18v. Cf. Michelle Brown, ed. The Holkham Bible Picture-Book: A Facsimile (London: British Library, 2007). Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, lat.18014, fol. 207. The image of this folio can be viewed in the BnF’s “Mandragore” database at http://mandragore. bnf.fr. Chantilly, Musée Condé, MS 71, fol. 28. May be viewed on the website maintained by the photographic services of the Réunion des Musées Nationaux at www.photo.rmn.fr/cf/htm/home.aspx, shelfmark 02- 007074. Sarah M. Horrall, general editor, The Southern Version of the Cursor Mundi, vol. 2, ed. Roger R. Fowler (Ottawa: University of Ontario Press, 1990), p. 63, ll. 11086–90. Transcribed from the Vernon manuscript, fol. 105, col. a (my italics). Cf. Ian A. Doyle, ed., The Vernon Manuscript. A Facsimile (Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 1986). London, British Library, Additional MS 35298 (late fifteenth century), fol. 61v. Particularly following the publication of Lois Ebin, ed., Vernacular Poetics in the Later Middle Ages, Studies in Medieval Culture 16 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1984). Cf. Mary Caroline Spalding, ed. The Middle English Charters of Christ, Bryn Mawr College Monographs 15 (1914), in The Middle English Compendium, http://name.umdl.umich.edu/AFW1075.0001.001. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson Poet. 175, fol. 94v, lines 80–85 (mid-fourteenth century); Spalding, ed., Middle English Charters, p. 27. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 89, fol. 46 (c.1400); Spalding, ed., Middle English Charters, p. 26. London, British Library, MS Harley 2346, fol. 52 (1400–1450); Spalding, ed., Middle English Charters, p. 27. London, British Library, Cotton Caligula A. ii, fol. 77r (1446–1460); Spalding, ed., Middle English Charters, p. 47. Cambridge University Library, MS. Ii. 3. 26, fol. 235 (1558); Spalding, ed., Middle English Charters, p. 60. On the medieval notion of the book as metaphorical body, see the seminal study by Jesse M. Gellrich, The Idea of the Book in the Middle Ages: Language Theory, Mythology, and Fiction (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), which is now superseded by Eric Jager, The Book of the Heart (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000). On medieval graffiti in England, no study has yet superseded Violet Pritchard’s English Medieval Graffiti (1967; repr. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

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59. Vernon Manuscript, Oxford, Bodleian Library, Eng. poet. a 1, fol. 231. In addition to the complete facsimile, the page is reproduced with great clarity and abundantly analyzed by Avril Henry, “ ‘The Pater Noster in a table ypeynted’ and some other Presentations of Doctrine in the Vernon Manuscript,” in Studies in the Vernon Manuscript, ed. Derek Pearsall (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1990), pp. 89–113.

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PART II IMPERMANENCE AND ACCUMULATION IN THE LITERARY IMAGINATION

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CHAPTER 7 REWRITING GENRES: BEOWULF AS EPIC ROMANCE Leo Carruthers

Investigation of its historical matter in parallel with its generic classifications shows Beowulf to be a literary palimpsest anticipating the historical novel.

D

efining the genre of the Old English Beowulf is a rather complex problem that is related to the theme of the present volume through the question of linguistic, generic, and cultural overlap involving ongoing oral composition and rewriting over several centuries.1 It can be difficult even to distinguish genres, as Roberta Frank says, in a literature lacking special terms for “epic,” “elegy,” or “lay.”2 In many respects Beowulf must be accepted as a kind of epic, even though Classical purists like Tolkien objected that this term only applied properly to Greek, not to Germanic poetry.3 In other respects it recalls the later medieval romances, which portray contemporary society in an idealized historical past, often mixed with elements of “faery” and fantasy, and some critics have indeed interpreted it in this way.4 Tolkien, in his day, solved the problem by inventing a completely new term, “heroic elegy,” which has much to recommend it but whose very originality may not do justice to the poem’s involvement with other genres. Anxious to avoid the danger (and limits) of overcategorization, others have pointed to the multiplicity of genres that Beowulf embodies and includes within itself, making it a veritable “literary summa” as Joseph Harris calls it, even going so far as to compare it in this respect to the Canterbury Tales.5 In addition to the poet’s use of “literary history” and “historical depth,” Harris points to “genealogical verse, a creation hymn, elegies, a lament, a praise poem, historical

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poems, a f lyting, heroic boasts, gnomic verse, a sermon . . . panegyric, [and] exempla” among the genres which find their way into Beowulf. Some of these are formally introduced, others are unmarked, but overall they contribute to the poem’s “catalogue-like qualities.”6 In view of this, it seems unwise, even arbitrary, to try to force Beowulf into a single Procrustean mode. It is a genre unto itself, for there is nothing else like it in Old English or in any other Germanic literature; but that does not preclude its containing elements of both epic and romance, terms which are not mutually exclusive.7 And while Beowulf may not meet all the criteria of “romance” found in a later medieval poem like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, it does have elements of the kind of historical romance which became popular in the nineteenth century. In the present essay I hope to show how Beowulf can be read as a historical romance through its combination of history and fiction, i.e. the placing of a fictional hero in a historical setting that is at least partly genuine, recognizable to the audience through references to authentic historical kings but remaining sufficiently vague to allow for imaginative developments. The historical novel emerged as a genre only in the nineteenth century and is very much associated with the career of Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832). It is characterized by the combination of history and fiction in varying degrees, the story taking place at a precise date and in a realistic setting. The degree of historicity will depend on this precision, as well as the extent to which authentic historical people and events are given either a central or a peripheral role in the story. Where the central characters are fictional, in a good historical novel they will be brought into contact with authentic figures from history, or will at least be affected by true historical events in such a manner that the story could only have taken place at the time and place described. Lacking such precision, the novel easily descends to the level of historical romance, especially in the hands of less competent historians than Scott.8 Such, for example, is the case with Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island (1881), where the historical backdrop is hardly more than a colorful stage-set; the action takes place in the eighteenth century but at no precise date; it does not include any authentic historical personages, and no allusion is made to any real historical event that could have affected the fictional characters or the course of the plot. Treasure Island is therefore the perfect example of a historical romance, unlike Scott’s historical novels where the desired level of authenticity is much higher.9 Beowulf is not of course a novel, but when viewed as history, it does have elements which may be compared to both the historical novel and the historical romance. The poem at least partly evokes a genuine past which the Anglo-Saxon audience would have seen as belonging to their history,

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in which authentic, identifiable kings play a role; and into this setting, fictional heroes and adventures are inserted. Indeed, one could argue that what the medieval Anglo-Saxons expected of their semi-historical, semimythological poetry is similar to what readers of the English historical novel or romance have expected since Scott’s day.10 In addition to melodrama and high adventure, the modern “historical romance” normally includes love, courtship and marriage, themes which clearly must not (and do not) dominate in a heroic poem like Beowulf. However, while they do not apply to the eponymous hero, in either of his roles as a young, unmarried warrior or as an old, heirless king, such themes are far from being absent from the poem, both among the main characters (think of those happily married royal couples, Hrothgar and Wealtheow in Denmark, Hygelac and Hygd in Geatland) and in the so-called “digressions” (the two tragic princesses, Hildeburh and Freawaru, would certainly not be out of place alongside Scott’s Lucy Ashton in The Bride of Lammermoor). The choice of “Epic Romance” in my title is therefore something of a compromise, which recalls both the epics and romances of medieval literature without being meant to limit the poem to either of those genres.11 Like all great works of literature, Beowulf is multilayered and cannot, in my opinion, be reduced to a single, overarching genre. However, for the purposes of the present essay I wish to consider those aspects which can be assimilated with historical fiction, whether this is expressed through the medium of the novel or the romance. We are perhaps inevitably inf luenced by modern expectations of the historical novel and/or romance, beginning with the word “novel” itself, leading us to exclude a poem like Beowulf automatically. The poem may not be a novel, but this difference needs to be seen in perspective, and in the context of the society which produced it. In the Old English period, verse occupied the place in society and in literary expression that prose would come to hold only after the Middle Ages had ended. In Old English literature only Apollonius of Tyre exists as evidence of the beginning of imaginative, fictional prose writing in the vernacular, and even then it is a translation from Latin. Apollonius is a historical romance in the sense that it is a love-story set in the past, but not a historical novel because of the absence of realism, i.e. of the desire to create the impression of historical authenticity. There are no known historical characters involved. Unlike the modern historical novel, the characters’ lives are not in any way affected by the concrete historical situation in which the story is set. They do not interact with people who really lived, with events that really took place. Beowulf, on the other hand, does meet these criteria; it is fiction with a historical perspective, beginning with the historical period in which the story is situated. What Roberta Frank writes of Germanic

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legend in general seems to me to apply perfectly to Beowulf: “Situated somewhere between history and fairy tale, Germanic legend tells of a distant and largely imaginary past.”12 Because readers tend, not incorrectly, to think of Beowulf as an English work which was composed in England and is found only in an English manuscript, it can be helpful to remind oneself that the poem is not in any explicit way about the Anglo-Saxons or their island. It is set, rather, in the ancient Continental homeland of the English—the territories of Saxons and Danes, Franks and Frisians whose settlement of Britain had begun in the second half of the fifth century and was still going on in the sixth century, the time period in which the poem’s narrative unfolds. That the Anglo-Saxons never lost interest in their origins is well exemplified by Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica as well as by the fact that this book was translated into Old English, probably at the end of the ninth century, about 160 years after its composition.13 Not only that, but they maintained an ongoing relationship with their Germanic kinsmen who continued to interact with them in the following centuries, for good or ill, in peace or at war. It is worth exploring how far Beowulf is a ref lection of its Germanic origin, how this English poem remains attached to Germanic myth and history, and also how it illustrates the dynamic involvement of the Anglo-Saxons with other Germanic peoples.14 The poem is eminently allusive, as the large number of proper names shows; apart from the characters in the story, many of these names refer to tribes and heroes known from other literary sources to belong to Germanic tradition, the dividing line between history and myth not always being entirely clear.15 Some of them are alluded to in another Old English poem, Widsith, further proof of the survival—or reinvention—of Germanic tradition in England.16 And while Beowulf makes no mention of England or the English, there is at least one highly significant reference to the ancestors of the Mercian kings—Offa the Angle, his wife and his son Eomer—and many believe Hengest of the Finn-episode to be the same as that Hengest named by Bede as the first Anglo-Saxon king of Kent.17 When and where was Beowulf first composed? While these two questions are related, one is greatly hampered by the discrepancy between the original, (probably) oral composition and the (probably) late written version found in the only extant manuscript. There is still no agreement among scholars as to when exactly the poem was first recited, nor as to the number of stages of oral composition and/or copying that may have been gone through before the surviving text was produced.18 Nor is there ready agreement as to the date of the manuscript itself. Placed by David Dumville in the period 997–1016, it is dated slightly later, to the reign of Cnut (1016–35), by Kevin Kiernan; while Helen Damico, aiming to tie

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it in with English politics after Cnut’s death, would even push it beyond that limit, after 1041.19 But whatever the precise date of the extant manuscript, there is no way of telling if the now lost exemplar used by the West Saxon scribes of the late tenth or early eleventh century was a recent text or not. It might have been written in the previous generation, or it might have been more than a hundred years old. What we know of the methods of Germanic metrical composition suggest that the poem would have had a long oral existence before it found its way into writing. The story was most likely passed on from one generation to another, no doubt told and retold many times, thus reshaping the oral form, since each new telling could produce a new version, embellished with stylistic variants. Theories about the original date of composition thus range from the seventh to the eleventh century; but on the whole, most critics tend to place the oral origins in the early to mid-eighth century, the age of Bede or soon after. The poet may have lived in the kingdom of Mercia, if we seriously consider his reference to the Continental king named Offa (lines 1949, 1957), distant ancestor of Offa of Mercia, the most powerful king in eighth-century England. Yet it must be stressed that everything basic to the poem could have come from any of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Thus, while the reference to the Continental Offa may suggest a Mercian origin for the existing version, this could be merely an addition to a more generally circulating story, added in to f latter a local patron. The Germanic peoples of most interest to the Anglo-Saxons were the Franks and the Danes, from the conversion period (beginning with St. Augustine in 597) down to the Norman Conquest. In between lay the numerous Viking invasions which deeply affected both AngloSaxons and Franks, leading to multiple alliances and counter-alliances— including the creation, in 911, of the Danish duchy of Normandy which would eventually conquer England in 1066. Understanding this longterm interaction helps us to see why Beowulf, regardless of its exact date and place of composition, belongs not only to England but to the wider Germanic world in a dialogue of past and present, looking back as it does to Continental roots while (indirectly) keeping an eye on contemporary warlike neighbors. It is this relationship between past and present which leads me to see the poem as both a “historical epic” and a “historical romance” in some ways, terms I have used before in an earlier study of the historical background.20 In my view the relationship with the present—regardless of when exactly that “present” occurred—also gave Beowulf political relevance in its own time, so much so that it could even have been drawn into the royal power struggles of the mid-eleventh century. This point is argued strongly by Helen Damico, who makes an interesting comparison between the fictional Wealhtheow and the

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actual Queen Emma (d. 1052), the subject and heroine of the anonymous Encomium Emmae Reginae (c. 1041).21 But whereas Damico sees Emma as the model for Hrothgar’s queen, thus turning the Latin Encomium into a source of the Anglo-Saxon poem—and thereby requiring an extremely late date for the Beowulf manuscript (in the 1040s)—she makes no allowance for the possibility of the reverse argument, i.e. that it was the poetic representation of Wealhtheow which inspired Emma’s panegyrist. The action of Beowulf covers a large part of the sixth century, from c.515 (the slaying of Grendel) to c.583 (Beowulf ’s death). This chronology is based on internal references to real kings, especially those of the Franks, Danes and Swedes, who are known from historical sources. As Klaeber reminds us, Beowulf ’s uncle, Hygelac of the Geats, actually died in AD 521, in a raid on the Frisian territory of the Franks, he being identical with the king who appears in Gregory of Tours’ Historia Francorum under the Latin form “Chlochilaicus.”22 The Frankish king at the time of Hygelac’s death was Theuderic I (511–33), son of the famous Clovis (481–511). With Beowulf ’s support, Hygelac is succeeded by his young son Heardred, who reigns as king of the Geats until killed in battle during the Swedish wars; this can be placed, from other historical sources, in 533, the year of the death of the Swedish king Ottar Vendel-Crow, named Ohþere in the poem. The fictional Beowulf then rules the Geats for fifty years, thus placing the dragon episode in c.583. Near the end of the poem, after the hero’s death, the atmosphere is one of fear, foreboding the renewal of warfare between the Geats and the Franks; the messenger recalls that Ūs wæs ā syððan Merewīoingas milts ungyfeðe [“Even since that, the favor of the Merovingian king has been denied to us”] (lines 2920–1). The ruler referred to here must be Childebert II (575–95), king of Austrasia which was the north-eastern part of the Frankish territories. Since Frisia lay within the Austrasian sphere of control, it was Childebert II whom the Danes and the Geats feared in the 580s, rather than Chilperic I (561–84) who ruled Neustria in the south-west. Gregory of Tours had a lot of personal dealings with Childebert II; and it is interesting to note that the fictional Beowulf ’s death falls precisely in the middle of Gregory’s episcopacy (573–94), at a time when the Franks were expanding their power in all directions. The historian J.M. Wallace-Hadrill emphasizes how very like other Germanic peoples the Anglo-Saxons remained, even after their conversion, and how they kept up political contact with some of their Continental cousins.23 The reference in Beowulf to the Merovingian threat did not escape him.24 This argues for the continuity of heroic traditions among all the Germanic peoples, whether or not they were Christian— and unlike the Franks and the Anglo-Saxons, many Germanic peoples

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such as the Saxons were still pagans in the eighth century. Significantly, Wallace-Hadrill compares the Frankish Mayor of the Palace, Charles Martel (c.688–741) to the hero Beowulf.25 And under his son, Pepin the Short, the Frankish kingdom was about to experience a political upheaval which the Anglo-Saxons cannot have ignored. For in 751 Pepin deposed the last of the Merovingians, Childeric III, becoming instead the first king of the Arnulfing or Carolingian line; and his own son, Charles the Great (Charlemagne), who ruled as king of the Franks from 768 and Holy Roman emperor from 800, was to be the most famous member of that family. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which concentrates almost exclusively on English affairs, hardly ever says anything about events on the Continent, but that need not imply lack of awareness; the rare, brief entry for 782, “Here the Old Saxons and the Franks fought,” has the ominous rumble of distant Carolingian thunder that just might burst into a storm over England.26 There is admittedly no clear agreement on the dating of Beowulf in its earliest oral form, though many find Peter Clemoes’s arguments in favor of the reign of Æthelbald, king of Mercia (716-57), persuasive.27 If Beowulf was first composed in the early or mid-eighth century, then it corresponds closely to the end of the Merovingian era and the rise of the Carolingians. Anglo-Saxon kings were fully aware of political changes on the Continent, and anxious to maintain good relations with the Franks, hence no doubt their familiarity with events and characters dating from two centuries before. We cannot know if the Anglo-Saxon scop learned of such ancient events through oral tradition handed down by his predecessors or through contact with contemporary Frankish poets. But even if the poem’s composition in something like its present form were to be placed much later, in the ninth or the tenth century, a similar line of argument would still hold good, since the Anglo-Saxon kings were in frequent contact with the Carolingian dynasty and anxious to remain on good terms with the later rulers of Francia.28 Indeed, it has been argued that the sense of kinship among the Germanic peoples, rather than fading away as time went on, actually increased in the ninth century, as Charlemagne brought Goths, Burgundians and Lombards into the Frankish empire.29 One example of Anglo-Frankish diplomatic relations will demonstrate both English awareness of this empire and Frankish anxiety to gain recognition from another Germanic nation—an anxiety that, unfortunately, was surpassed in this case by Charlemagne’s wellknown possessiveness in regard to his daughters. In 789 Charlemagne sought an Anglo-Saxon princess, Ælff læd of Mercia, daughter of the famous King Offa (757-96), as a bride for his son, Charles the Younger. Although the Frankish king later withdrew the proposal in irritation

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because the lady’s father hoped to arrange a double alliance, wanting his son Ecgfrith to marry Charlemagne’s daughter Bertha at the same time, his initial interest shows how important he felt Offa to be. And the king of the Franks needed support in Europe: though soon to be granted imperial dignity by the pope and crowned in Rome, Charlemagne was not recognized as such by the Roman Emperor in the East, the legitimate successor of Constantine the Great. This Offa of Mercia has also been taken, as we have seen, as a likely patron of the Beowulf-poet. It is probably not a coincidence that one of his famous ancestors from the migration period, Offa, king of the Angles (died c.456), is mentioned in the poem (ll. 1949, 1957). This could be an indication that Beowulf was composed at the Mercian court under Offa; or else, if the poem dated from the reign of his uncle, Æthelbald (716-57), the reference to the Continental Offa may have been inserted later in order to f latter the Anglo-Saxon king of the same name. The reference occurs in one of the so-called “digressions,” giving an unf lattering portrait of the Continental Offa’s proud and murderous wife Thryth, or Modthryth. This, however, may be quite intentional on the poet’s part, as the name echoes that of Cynethryth, wife of Offa of Mercia, a woman of remarkable character and one of the very few Anglo-Saxon queens known to have shared power with her husband.30 If this is meant as an indirect criticism of a contemporary of the poet’s, it reinforces Beowulf ’s relevance to political issues of its own day. It also raises the possibility that such relevance may have been ongoing, lending itself to new, rewritten versions of the poem, an argument that seems especially applicable to the prologue which may be designed to f latter a much later king, Cnut the Dane (1016-35). All of the English kingdoms, from the period of conversion (597-686) to the Norman Conquest (1066), enjoyed a homogeneous Anglo-Saxon culture which blended the ancient Germanic heroic traditions with Roman religion and Latin learning. The Vikings, indeed, radically disrupted the political situation during the ninth century; and a later generation of Danish invaders would eventually take over the whole kingdom during the eleventh. But once settled in Britain, little by little they established peaceful relations with the English and were converted to Christianity, beginning in 878 with the baptism of Guthrum—whose former enemy in battle, Alfred the Great, became his godfather. Despite the rule of Danish kings from 1016 to 1042, the Scandinavian settlers were finally integrated into the prevailing culture. Although as said earlier there can be no certainty about the exact date of the Beowulf manuscript, if it was copied early in Cnut’s reign (1016–35), it is not improbable that the prologue was specially added in his honor. For it recounts the

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foundation of the Danish royal family, beginning with the eponymous ancestor Scyld Scefing and concluding with the accession of his grandson Hrothgar, who is king of Denmark when the main story opens (l. 64). This glorification of Danish royal ancestry looks suspiciously like a late interpolation, which would have been particularly easy to slip in at the beginning of the text. Such an addition would hardly seem necessary in an English poem composed in eighth-century Mercia, and would not even be politically correct in ninth- or tenth-century Wessex; but it would be very suitable at the Anglo-Danish court of Cnut.31 While this argues in favor of the rewriting of at least some parts of the poem to take into account the political situation of the English kingdom at the time the copyist may have been working, it does not follow that such rewriting can be extended into the 1040s, a suggested dating that the manuscript can hardly justify. That the opening scene of Beowulf was not a mere fancy on the part of the poet, but was an authentic ref lection of historical burial practice, was demonstrated by the 1939 discovery of the Sutton Hoo ship burial, probably meant as a cenotaph for Rædwald, king of East Anglia who died in 624 or 625.32 It also showed, as Mayr-Harting has pointed out, that the coming of Christianity did not immediately put an end to pagan customs among the English, and that an Anglo-Saxon writer could speak with knowledge of such things without himself being a pagan.33 It follows that the prologue of Beowulf could have been composed by a Christian, which refutes the earlier supposition that it was of very ancient pagan origin. For kings like Rædwald, the memory of the ancestral homeland was certainly still very close—much closer than in the time of Offa of Mercia who lived more than a century later. Continental kings like the historical Hrothgar and Hygelac had reigned scarcely a hundred years before Rædwald’s day; Germanic legends were the stuff of entertainment in Anglo-Saxon royal halls. We may well imagine that in the courts of such kings, tales of their pagan kinsmen in Denmark circulated from the earliest times, and continued to do so for many generations. Rædwald’s attempt at religious syncretism, mixing pagan and Christian rituals, is hardly surprising, however much execrated by Bede. It is remarkable that a century after Rædwald’s death, Bede, who lived far away in Northumbria, was able to learn this scandalous detail which had probably been handed down by generations of disapproving monks; it was, no doubt, one of those oral accounts “ex traditione maiorum” mentioned by Bede in his autobiographical note. We may thus observe the ongoing interest of the English—certainly in royal and noble circles—in their Continental origins and their connections with other Germanic peoples. This Beowulf strongly ref lected, and continued to do during the period of both oral and written transmission.

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It is interesting to contrast the method used by the best modern historical novelists, from Scott’s time onwards, with the type of attitude to the past found in medieval writers in general. From at least one point of view, that of the apparent anachronisms, Beowulf does not conform to the model historical novel of the Waverley type. This is because of the modern effort to use reliable sources in order to create an authentic view of a former age, meaning, as Leerssen puts it with reference to Scott and the “new attitude to the past” which dates only from the late eighteenth century, “that the past should be studied not as a collection of moral exempla and in terms of its applicability to the present, but ‘intrinsically,’ in its own right and in its own moral and epistemic frame of reference.”34 Although the Old English poem does look back to an older time, the type of culture it ref lects is largely that of the audience of its own day. In fact, it is a ref lection of what Christian English kings and nobles admired between the seventh and the eleventh centuries. It is less a description of pre-Christian Scandinavia than a ref lection of Christian England. The so-called historical and religious anachronisms disappear if we understand that the poem is not meant as a history-lesson; it ref lects, rather, its own place and time, which is Anglo-Saxon England after the conversion period. Regardless of its exact date of composition, therefore, the poem was and remained an “epic romance” in the historical mode designed to appeal to a noble Anglo-Saxon audience of any century. It is perhaps impossible for any historical poem, romance or novel to avoid ref lecting its author’s culture to some extent. No work of art can merely be a mirror held up to the past, a sort of time-machine successfully taking the audience back to another age. It is, rather, a vision, an attempted re-creation, whose success depends on the author’s skill, knowledge and intentions. This attempt is perhaps what most radically separates the medieval epic or romance from the modern historical novel. Beginning with Scott, serious historical novelists have not only been imaginative writers but also historians; they do their research in order to get the historical background as right as possible according to their lights, and they fill it in with what they believe to be authentic historical details; they try to avoid anachronisms which would betray the fact that they write from a later perspective. Whether or not they do get it right is, of course, another question; historical novelists, like other kinds of historians, may misunderstand the facts, or misrepresent them, or play with them for literary effect. Scott’s Ivanhoe, for example, has been derided by modern critics for its exaggeration of the supposed enmity between “Saxons” (depicted as “real” Englishmen) and “Normans” (seen as foreign intruders) in the reign of Richard the Lionheart, by which time, it is now believed, the distinction that had existed in William the Conqueror’s day

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was no longer current—a salutary reminder that the novel is not, after all, “history,” but a story with a historical background that is only partially accurate. It may be difficult ever to achieve complete authenticity, since every writer remains a person of his/her own century and cannot help being the product of the culture and time in which they live. But at least the effort is made: the attempt is there to relive, and recreate, another place and time. It is the conscious historical approach made by one who knows the past well. This was certainly how Scott, who was a competent historian as well as a poet and novelist, thought of his historical novels. Moreover, he liked to insert authorial comments in order to distance the period under question from the society of his own day: thus Waverley’s subtitle, ’Tis Sixty Years Since, recurs repeatedly throughout the novel as a reminder that things have changed in the intervening period.35 But we do not find this attitude in the hands of medieval poets and writers who placed their stories in the past. Conscious of the passage of time they certainly were; just as one generation succeeds another, it was clear to them that their ancestors had lived hundreds of years before, and individuals like Bede were aware that language itself had changed since then. But there is no desire in Old English poetry to create historical authenticity in literary terms—no attempt to portray a radically different culture, to ref lect the mentality of another age, or to reproduce realistic speech from another century. Even among medieval historians, there is little writing of that kind. For Bede the main difference between men of his own time and those of earlier generations, whether Roman, Celt or Anglo-Saxon, seems to be religious; his people are either Christians or not, or on the point of being converted. But there is no attempt to place the reader in the mind-set of an earlier age. Bede does not try, for example, to understand King Rædwald’s religious syncretism, or to see his side of the story as a modern historian or historical novelist might do. In like manner we may say that the Beowulf-poet, though conscious of writing about the past, does not make the kind of imaginative leap into history that one would expect in a historical novel. Criticism of the poem on the grounds of historical anachronism therefore seems misdirected, since the poet did not try to make that past seem very different from his own day. Yet Beowulf is a story of olden days, recreated through the art of a poet who lived perhaps hundreds of years after the period evoked. Some of the basic details were historical, especially the names of kings— Hrothgar, Hygelac, Ongentheow—and the large-scale depiction of tribal conf lict, especially the Swedish-Geatish wars. These things were part of the common fund of tradition which circulated among all the Germanic peoples. Other important elements were imaginative, depending on the creative ability of the poet who first invented the story: such is the hero,

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Beowulf himself, who does not correspond to any known person in the recorded chronicles. This does not mean that the scop who composed the extant version, if late, was incapable of using archaic style and diction in order to create a deliberately ancient effect, a literary “air of antiquity.” It is possible, as Roberta Frank says, that “Beowulf was invoking semiobsolete linguistic markers in order to paint a heroic past, just as AngloLatin poets confected new hexameters out of authoritative old ones . . . .”36 Nevertheless one does not find that projection of self into “wholly vanished conditions” that Leerssen defines as literary historicism—that “attempt to reconnect with the nation’s past” which became marked in Europe from 1790 onwards.37 For this reason Beowulf may be said to be closer to epic romance than to the historical novel. Although historiography and literature may share storytelling techniques, historical composition and fictional writing are not, indeed, the same thing, as we have seen in the case of novels like Waverley and Ivanhoe. Tolkien also reminds us of this in his most famous essay, “The Monsters and the Critics,” drawing attention to Beowulf ’s fictionality in contrast to those who would read it as “history.” He objects to the way in which Beowulf had been treated: “Beowulf has been used as a quarry of fact and fancy far more assiduously than it has been studied as a work of art . . . And it is as an historical document that it has mainly been examined and dissected.”38 Nor did he accept the suggestion, current in his day, that Beowulf was a “primitive” poem. On the contrary, he says, “it is a late one, using the materials . . . preserved from a day already changing and passing, a time that has now for ever vanished, swallowed in oblivion; using them for a new purpose . . . , its maker . . . expended his art in making keen that touch upon the heart which sorrows have that are both poignant and remote.”39 Another example of such an attitude among the Anglo-Saxons is provided by The Battle of Maldon, which is, after Beowulf, the longest and most important heroic poem in Old English. It is a commonplace of Old English literary criticism to say that this poem, based on an event of the year AD 991, preserves evidence of certain heroic traditions said to be typical of Germanic society of the first century, like those described by the Roman historian, Tacitus, in his Germania of AD 98—always supposing Tacitus to be a reliable witness, which is by no means certain. Maldon is thus seen as an expression of the survival, fully eight hundred years after Tacitus and five hundred after the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, of the ancient heroic code of the Germanic tribes. But rather than “survival,” it would be better to speak of a nostalgic memory; the heroic age echoed in Maldon, and in other poems like Beowulf, was long past, so that writers or copyists of around the year 1000 were not without

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a certain taste for the antique. As Michael Swanton says, the Maldon poet was writing in the heroic style at a time which was no longer heroic.40 It is a literary mode: the poet is concerned less with the figure of Byrhtnoth as a “hero” than with the code of honor which leads his men to die for their leader. It is this which makes Maldon seem an authentic echo of that ancient Germanic heroic code which Tacitus admired so much while perhaps exaggerating it for his own purpose. The “traditional” values of the comitatus seem to live again: honor, loyalty, courage and self-sacrifice. And Beowulf, too, belongs to this romantic, nostalgic mind-set typical of a sophisticated society looking back on its past. One may even attribute to the Maldon poet a spirit of nostalgic didacticism, in the same vein as that which Malory would show several centuries later in his Morte Darthur (1469), i.e. a vision of a lost golden age. The Anglo-Saxon love of Germanic legend is comparable to both the medieval and the modern fascination with King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. While being aware of the danger of anachronism, one may say that what makes them similar is the wistful evocation of heroic virtues and of chivalric values. And the feelings expressed by Tacitus could in turn be described as the first example in European history of the “noble savage” theme. It indicates a recurring tendency to look back on an earlier stage of history as a golden age, “the good old days.” Tacitus does not present his Germans as Romans in disguise, but he does use them to draw attention to the loss of heroic values—indeed, of the old virtues of the Republic—in the Rome of his own day. In his view, Rome would do well to revive and imitate the comitatus mentality of the so-called “barbarians.” And this same nostalgia is the source of the “heroic elegy” that Tolkien wrote about in regard to Beowulf, with its “sorrows that are both poignant and remote.” If André Crépin is right in describing Beowulf as a “mirror for princes,” the hero being presented as an “ideal king,”41 here again one may see in the poem’s idealism an echo of that lost world, that glory of olden times which Tacitus observed—or wished his readers to believe in. For all of these reasons it would therefore be a mistake to seek too much historical verisimilitude in Old English poetry in general and in Beowulf in particular. The poem, whether as an early oral composition or as a late rewriting in the extant manuscript, needs to be set in perspective—both the multiple historical perspective implied by the extensive time scale from the eighth to the eleventh centuries, and the “interpretive plurality” (to use Breizmann’s phrase) that criticism requires.42 It is a story, told for its own sake, including some genuine historical references but telling us more about the literary taste of Germanic kings and Anglo-Saxon noblemen who enjoyed the

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“nostalgic reconstruction of a northern heroic age.”43 Beowulf therefore portrays a society that is both pagan Germanic and Christian English, in which not everything that is pagan is to be disdained. The poet clearly understood the religious difference between English Christians and their pagan Germanic ancestors, but this is downplayed or ignored: Beowulf and his companions are “good pagans,” almost, one might say, like the English themselves before the conversion—paralleled, indeed, at least from the Christian viewpoint, by the people of the Old Testament waiting for the coming of the Savior. Anachronistic this may well appear to be, but the poem transcends the “realistic” genre. If we accept an eighth-century date for the original composition of Beowulf, the fact that it was still being copied around the year 1000 (or soon after) means that Anglo-Saxon taste had not changed much in three hundred years, at least in this respect. Its audience in the late tenth or early eleventh century was still fascinated with Continental origins, and still at war with other Germanic peoples—witness the actual battle at Maldon, which was only one engagement in a long series of Viking attacks leading to the deposition and death of Æthelred (978–1016) who would be replaced by a Danish king, Cnut. Cultured and pious the English scribes may have been, but they were still interested in a story of the olden days, in the heroic deeds of a romantic warrior-king who recalled their ancestors of the bygone pagan era. Notes 1. The standard edition is Frederick Klaeber, ed. Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg, 3rd edn. with suppl. (1922; Boston & London: D.C. Heath, 1950). It has now been superseded by Robert Fulk, Robert Bjork and John D. Niles, eds. Klaeber’s Beowulf, 4th edn. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008). 2. Roberta Frank, “Germanic Legend in Old English Literature,” in The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature, ed. Malcolm Godden and Michael Lapidge (Cambridge: CUP, 1991), p. 95. 3. “Beowulf is not an epic, nor even a magnified lay. No terms borrowed from Greek or other literatures exactly fit: there is no reason why they should.” J.R.R. Tolkien, “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” in An Anthology of Beowulf Criticism, ed. L.E. Nicholson (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1963), p. 85. Originally published in Proceedings of the British Academy 22 (1936): 245–95. 4. See, for example, Natalia Breizmann, “ ‘Beowulf ’ as Romance: Literary Interpretation as Quest,” MLN 113 (1998): 1022–35. 5. Joseph Harris, “Beowulf in Literary History,” Pacific Coast Philology 17.1-2 (November 1982): 16 [16–23].

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6. Harris, “Beowulf in Literary History,” 17, 19, 20. As this list makes clear, the notion of “genre” adopted by Harris attaches importance to the formal structures of written texts as well as to their content. A similar approach is used in the present article. 7. “The medieval metrical romances were akin to the chansons de gestes and epic,” according to J.A. Cuddon, The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, 3rd edn. (London: Penguin, 1992), p. 804 (s.v. “Romance”). Under “Epic,” p. 284, he defines an epic as “a long narrative poem, on a grand scale, about the deeds of warriors and heroes . . . incorporating myth, legend, folk tale and history.” Beowulf is included as a “primary epic,” i.e. one of originally oral composition. 8. Joep Leerssen, “Literary Historicism: Romanticism, Philologists, and the Presence of the Past,” Modern Language Quarterly 65.2 ( June 2004): 221–43, emphasizes the “scholarly and nonescapist aspect of Romantic authors” like Scott, whose learned endeavors we wrongly tend to “belittle” and “marginalize” (222), whereas he was in reality “an antiquarian of note” and a “historian-novelist” (224). 9. Both genres, the historical novel and the historical romance, have remained productive and popular down to the present day. Good examples of writers seeking to express historical authenticity in their fictional work would include Umberto Eco (The Name of the Rose, 1980) and Peter Tremayne (the “Sister Fidelma” series, 1994–2010), both of whom are also known as historians and anthropologists. 10. Scott’s Waverley (begun in 1805 but not finished until 1814) is often called the first historical novel. The introduction states that it is “neither a romance of chivalry, nor a tale of modern manners,” indicating the author’s awareness of the novelty of the genre. The sub-title, ’Tis Sixty Years Since, not only clarifies the period concerned (1745) but also defines one of the requirements of the genre, namely its setting before the writer’s lifetime. Since the author remained officially anonymous for many years, the term “Waverley novels” was rapidly applied to the numerous fictional works, mostly on historical themes, which Scott published between 1814 and his death in 1832. One of the most famous is certainly Ivanhoe (1819), often considered to be the first historical romance. 11. K.S. Whetter, Understanding Genre and Medieval Romance (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008) recognizes that the two genres share a number of features (p. 95), and himself coined a “generic hendiadys,” tragic-romance, to define Malory’s Morte Darthur (pp. 8, 48, 109). 12. Frank, “Germanic Legend,” p. 89. 13. On the dating of the Old English manuscripts of Bede’s H.E., see Sharon M. Rowley’s essay in the present volume. 14. Roberta Frank, “Germanic Legend,” has much more to say about these topics, not only in general but with specific reference to Beowulf throughout.

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15. Klaeber’s list of Proper Names, even after one has grouped together multiple tribal epithets—most notoriously in the case of the Danes, who may be referred to in the poem as North, South, East, West, Ring, Spear (Gar-), or Bright Danes—still has 117 head words. Some are place names, but the majority are those of individuals and tribes from Germanic myth and history. Many, though not all, can be identified. 16. The classic edition which identifies most of these tribes and individuals is Kemp Malone, ed., Widsith, rev. ed. (1936; Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1962). There is a more recent edition in Joyce Hill, ed., Old English Minor Heroic Poems, Durham Medieval Texts 4, rev. ed. (Durham, 1994). Deor, a shorter Old English poem containing some material of the same type, may also be consulted. 17. Many commentators, including Tolkien and Bliss, believe the two Hengests to be the same man. The question has been most thoroughly dealt with in J.R.R. Tolkien, Finn and Hengest: the Fragment and the Episode, ed. Alan Bliss (London: Allen & Unwin, 1982; paperback HarperCollins, 1998). 18. This highly vexed question remains controversial. Roberta Frank gives a most useful and illuminating survey of the various theories which were discussed at a 1980 conference, plus the many developments since then, in her 2007 presidential address to the Medieval Academy of America, “A Scandal in Toronto: The Dating of Beowulf a Quarter Century On,” Speculum 82.4 (Oct. 2007): 843–64. 19. Helen Damico, “Beowulf ’s Foreign Queen and the Politics of EleventhCentury England,” in Virginia Blanton and Helene Scheck, eds., Intertexts: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Culture Presented to Paul E. Szarmach (Tempe: ACMRS and Brepols, 2008), pp. 209–40 (see especially notes 5 and 6 for references to the earlier dating). 20. Leo Carruthers. “History, Archaeology and Romance in Beowulf,” Lectures d’une œuvre : Beowulf, ed. Marie-Françoise Alamichel (Paris: Éditions du Temps, 1998), pp. 11 and 22 [11–27]. 21. Helen Damico, “Beowulf ’s Foreign Queen,” pp. 220–3, interprets the name Wealhtheow to mean “Norman captive” and applies it to the historical Emma, who was the daughter of the Duke of Normandy. 22. Hygelac’s death in campaign against the Franks and Frisians is mentioned twice, starting at line 1202, and then at line 2913. Beowulf, ed. Klaeber, p. xxxix, gives credit to N.F.S. Grundtvig for identifying Hygelac as Gregory’s Chlochilaicus. The Historia Francorum was composed when Gregory was Bishop of Tours, from 573 to his death in 594. 23. J.M. Wallace-Hadrill, The Barbarian West 400–1000, rev. ed. (1952; London: Blackwell, 1996). 24. Wallace-Hadrill, The Barbarian West, p. 68. 25. Wallace-Hadrill, The Barbarian West, p. 86. 26. “Her Ald Seaxe & Francan gefuhtun.” Entered at 779 in manuscript E, and at 780 in manuscript A, the date is corrected to 782 in Michael

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27. 28.

29. 30.

31.

32.

33.

34. 35.

36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43.

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Swanton, transl., The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 2nd edn. (1996; London: Dent, 2000). Swanton explains, p. 52 n. 1, that “the Saxons slaughtered Frankish invaders east of the Teutoburgerwald, and in retaliation Charlemagne carried out a large-scale massacre at Verdun.” Peter Clemoes, Interactions of Thought and Language in Old English Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. xiii. In addition to “the Merovingian king” already mentioned, other references to the Franks in Beowulf occur at l. 1210, genitive plural Francna, and l. 2912, dative plural Froncum. See Frank, “Germanic Legend,” p. 93. See the account in Michael Lapidge, John Blair, Simon Keynes and Donald Scragg, eds., The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), p. 133. This suggestion is in line with Kiernan’s work on the late dating of the manuscript and his belief that the text as we have it was altered by the scribe. See Kevin S. Kiernan, Beowulf and the Beowulf Manuscript, 2nd edn. rev. with a foreword by Katherine O’Brien O’Keefe (1981; Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996). For a complete archaeological report see R.L.S. Bruce-Mitford et al., The Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial, 3 vols. (London: British Museum, 1975, 1978, 1983). Henry Mayr-Harting, The Coming of Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England, 3rd edn. (1972; University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991). Leerssen, “Literary Historicism,” 229. Sir Walter Scott, Waverley; or, ’Tis Sixty Years Since [1814], ed. Claire Lamont, Oxford World Classics (Oxford, 1986). The subtitle recurs on pp. 5, 34, 56, 171, 319, etc. Frank, “A Scandal in Toronto,” 859 and 862. Leerssen, “Literary Historicism,” 237, 239, 242. Tolkien, “The Monsters and the Critics,” p. 53. Tolkien, “The Monsters and the Critics,” p. 88. Michael Swanton, English Poetry Before Chaucer (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2002), p. 188. André Crépin, ed. and trans., Beowulf. Édition revue, nouvelle traduction, Lettres Gothiques (Paris: Livre de Poche, 2007), p. 23 (my translation). Breizmann, “ ‘Beowulf ’ as Romance,” 1023 passim. Frank, “A Scandal in Toronto,” 863.

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CHAPTER 8 PALIMPSESTIC PHILOMELA: REINSCRIPTION IN CHAUCER’S “LEGEND OF PHILOMELA” Gila Aloni

In rewriting Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book VI, Chaucer partially erases his source to make room for his own “Legend of Philomela.”

M

y analysis focuses on one aspect of literary production in the Middle Ages—the erasure and rewriting of old texts, as seen in Geoffrey Chaucer’s rewriting of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book VI,1 the main source of his “Legend of Philomela,” one of the nine legends in The Legend of Good Women. It is the story of the bond between two sisters separated by marriage, distanced by an act of rape, which ultimately brings them together.2 Chaucer rewrites the Ovidian story, portraying his Philomela as one in a series of “good women”; in the place of the grisly ending of the Ovidian tale, Chaucer’s conclusion leaves Philomela and her sister “in here sorwe dwelle” (l. 2382). The analysis that follows looks at “dwelle” as a psychological, mental connection between two sisters.3 In reworking the story of Philomela, Chaucer shifts relationships in a way that deconstructs certain archetypical images of women as well as their passivity and inability to react to violence in the male- dominated society of the Middle Ages; he also constructs ways to schematize these alternative relationships. The relationships that this analysis explores fall outside the category of the exchange of women to cement relations between men, as in Claude Levi-Strauss’s anthropological insights on kinship structures, which are generally applicable to medieval society.4 In the commercial triangle of two men and one woman, Levi-Strauss explains, the woman is transacted. Such a structural, economic view of women emphasizes her passivity. In

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her feminist reading of Levi- Strauss’s theory, Gayle Rubin suggests that what is at stake in the exchange of women in marriage is not so much the circumvention of incest, but the forging of ties between men. Rubin explains that “if it is women who are being transacted, then it is the men who give and take them who are linked, the woman being a conduit of a relationship rather than a partner to it.”5 Rubin’s model applies to Chaucer’s rewriting of the “Legend of Philomela,” and yet the legend includes elements that go beyond it to underscore the bond between women. The woman cements the bonds of men with men, yet at the same time she functions as a bar, a third element interposed between them.6 It is instructive to read Rubin’s interpretation of Levi-Strauss’s insights into kinship structures alongside legal and historical documents regarding the role and meaning of rape in medieval England. Two terms dominate medieval discourse on forced coitus: abduction and raptus.7 Over the past century or so, critics have debated the meaning of the second term, the source of the modern English word “rape.” Some insist that raptus lacked sexual connotations in medieval Latin and would not have been used to denote forced coitus.8 Others are certain raptus could have no other meaning but forced coitus.9 Still other scholars claim that raptus was charged with so many meanings that it is impossible to tell in any given case whether it means forced coitus or abduction.10 This lack of clarity regarding the word raptus in the Middle Ages is best exemplified in Chaucer’s personal story. Chaucer was accused of raptus, but it is not certain in what sense the word was used.11 Recently, Christopher Cannon has explained that acts termed “abduction” and “rape” in medieval documents relate to a “complex continuum of behavior” and constitute a “persistent gray area” in legal thinking.12 Whether abduction or rape, assault of a woman was perceived as an offense against her father or husband.13 Ravishment, as defined, for instance, in one of the important medieval English codes on this issue, Westminster I, ch. 13, was considered as “committed not against the person ravished (the woman) but against those, either husband or guardian, who have an [economic] interest in her.”14 J.B. Post’s analysis of Westminster I (written in 1275) and II (1285) explains that “accusation of rape was often used as a procedure for invoking family shame.”15 Egidis Bossi (1487–1546) noted that rape was a crime against a woman’s parents as well as against the victim.16 Writing between 1187 and 1189, Glanvill, the most important legal authority before Bracton, states that redemption through marriage does not efface the damage done to the family’s honor: Sic enim frequenter contingeret seruilis conditionis homines generosissimas mulieres unius pollutionis occasione perpetuo fedare . . . et ita claram parentum eorum famam indecenter denigrari.

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[For if he could it would frequently happen as a result of a single defilement that men of servile status disgraced forever women of good birth . . . and thus the fair repute of their families would be unworthily blackened.]17

The medieval attitude toward rape has its roots in early Roman law: “[I]n Roman terminology the emphasis in the law relating to raptus generally centered on the damage that the household suffered rather than on the personal hurt and injury done to the victim.”18 In addition to glossing rape as the act of sexually assaulting a woman or abducting her, or both, the Middle English Dictionary explains rape as an act done in “haste, hurry; quickly, hurriedly,” and as the “forceful seizure of somebody or something, plundering, robbery, extortion.”19 Rape in Chaucer’s time, then, was also related to theft, to moving something from one space to another. Whether rape is understood as sexual violence, abduction, or the unlawful seizure of property, scholars often view the “Legend of Philomela” as portraying one type of women’s suffering in The Legend of Good Women. Earlier critics of this story have seen the women as victims of violence and lust.20 Robert Frank claims that “Progne and Philomela possess the requisite of helplessness and innocence.”21 Frank sees the tone of the “Legend of Philomela” as pathetic.22 Others still, looking at women as passive sufferers, see Philomela as victim of her aggressor.23 The focus on women’s weakness continues with Carolyn Dinshaw pointing to women losing motor control of their bodies as they shake and tremble out of fear.24 According to Priscilla Martin, Philomela simply is “voiceless,” which is part of the “final image of each poem [where there is] a silenced heroine.”25 Richard Ireland sees Philomela as a woman who, without a male protector or tongue to speak, is legally silenced.26 For Jill Mann, the pathos of the last scene of Philomela and Procne mourning in each others’ arms acts against the threat of infection by the tale’s “venym.”27 But as Corinne Saunders has pointed out, this argument “ignores the new voice found by Philomela through her weaving.”28 Indeed, feminist theorists have seen Philomela’s weaving as a symbol of a new feminine mode of power and creativity, where the woman is the artist telling her own story.29 On the whole, however, relatively few critics have discussed The Legend of Good Women, and even fewer have turned their attention to the “Legend of Philomela.” Criticism of the “Legend of Philomela” has focused either on the relationship between man and woman, aggressor and victim, or on weaving as an alternative language. No one has seen how a woman so seemingly weak can demonstrate strength in bonding

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with another woman outside the male- dominated social structure. What has been overlooked, therefore, is Chaucer’s treatment of relations between women in this legend. This treatment is the product of erasure and reinscription of his Ovidian source. Lack of critical attention to this crucial aspect of the story, the bond between Procne and Philomela, may be due to the general interest in what seems to be the main theme of the legends and in Chaucer’s work in general: the relationship between men and women. Martin states: There are two simple things that one can say with confidence. The first is that women and the relationship between the sexes are Chaucer’s favorite subject. . . . The second is that he treats their relationship as a problem area. He writes of the suffering caused to both sexes in their involvement with each other.30

The issues of marriage and of rape, which are central to the narrative of the “Legend of Philomela,” may create the critics’ impression that Chaucer’s major concern is the victimization of women by men.31 An examination of precisely the scenes where Philomela becomes a victim makes it clearer that another kind of relationship is at issue. Threatened with rape, Philomela calls “ ‘Syster!’ with ful loud a stevene, / And ‘Fader dere’! and ‘Help me, God in hevene’ ” (ll. 2328–29). Chaucer adopts this plea with a slight but significant variation, from his main source, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book VI. In his source, Philomela calls, “clamato saepe parente, saepe sorore sua, magnis super omnia divis” [having called often to her father, often to her sister, but above all to the great gods] (ll. 525–26). Philomela’s cry for help, in Chaucer’s inversion of order—where she first calls her sister and then her father—indexes one fundamental structure of bonding. This is the relationship between Philomela, her sister, and her father. The fact that Chaucer inverts the order of Philomela’s cry in his legend draws attention to the relationship between the two sisters. This bond between Procne and Philomela can best be studied in comparison with the other relationships in the story: those between Pandion and Tereus, Tereus and Procne, and Tereus and Philomela, as well as those involving Pandion and Philomela, and Pandion and his two daughters. The series of alliances and relationships in the “Legend of Philomela” take on various configurations, the most significant of which occur between the two women. This is the only bond that is sustained throughout the story, and it is the one with which Chaucer chooses to end his legend. Ties between men, forged through the exchange of a woman, are based on legal/economic alliances that move the woman from her father’s

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territory to her husband’s. Bonds between women, which are outside the basic kinship structure, exist beyond the limits of geographical space. Sisterhood in Chaucer’s legend is based on love, support, and comfort in times of emotional distress. Chaucer fictionalizes the same type of bond in “The Wife of Bath’s Tale,” where the queen and other ladies rise in support of the raped maiden and beg the king to place the knight’s fate in their hands.32 The similarity between these two cases of raped women lies in the support they receive from other women. In both cases women are involved in “a permanent relationship unformalized by pledge or contract, a sisterhood whose informal obligation is the furtherance of its members.”33 In marrying Procne to Tereus, Pandion acted according to the dictates of convention and political considerations: he married her to a king. Chaucer’s source, Ovid, elaborates on this marriage of convenience: “quem sibi Pandion opibusque virisque potentem/ et genus a magno ducentem forte Gradivo / conubio Procnes iunxit” [since he [Tereus] was strong in wealth and in men, and traced his descent, as it happened, from Gradivus, Pandion, king of Athens, allied him to himself by wedding him to Procne] (ll. 426–28). Chaucer’s text erases all information about Procne’s first five years of marriage, which appears in his Ovidian source. In Chaucer’s version, the first reference to Procne after her wedding appears when she is said to “desyr” (l. 2262) to see her sister. By contrast, Ovid speaks of a son named Itys who was born to Procne and Tereus, the joy the parents shared with the people of Thrace and the festivities in the celebration of the birth (ll. 435–38). The effacing of the son is necessary for Chaucer to avoid the murder that occurs at the end of Ovid’s story. But this erasure also focuses Chaucer’s version on the women. Lack of reference to any detail regarding Procne’s marriage suggests that the emotional significance of the bond between the sisters is greater than that of the marital ties that bind Procne to Tereus. When Tereus returns to Athens and asks Pandion to let him take his second daughter to Thrace, Pandion seems unwilling to part with her: “Of al this world he loveth nothyng so” (l. 2282). Tereus has to promise Pandion he will bring Philomela back after “a month or tweye” (l. 2273). On this matter, Chaucer leaves his source unaltered. But Chaucer makes an alteration to his source by changing the moment of Pandion’s weeping. In Ovid’s text, Pandion weeps the day following his consent to Philomela’s departure (l. 494) as he says his farewell to her (l. 510). In Chaucer’s text the weeping appears exactly at the moment he gives his permission for Philomela to go. Pandion’s hesitation, in Chaucer’s version, might be seen as resulting from an anxiety of loss, his fear that he might never see his beloved daughter again since he is old and could

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soon die. Yet it seems Pandion simply does not trust Tereus. Two textual details reinforce this conclusion: the first is that Pandion seems to make the whole city his witness as he accompanies Tereus and Philomela to the sea “through the mayster- strete / Of Athens” (ll. 2305–06) to ensure that Tereus will keep his promise. This information does not appear in Ovid. Secondly, Chaucer explains that Pandion returns home without thinking of any malice being intended against Philomela: “no malyce he ne thoughte” (l. 2305). This line, too, is a Chaucerian addition. It can, as Edgar Finley Shannon has suggested, be read simply as meaning Pandion could not even conceive of malice against her.34 Nevertheless, it may indicate that he was in fact anxious about Philomela’s suffering some wrong. Had he not been, there would have been no reason to deny Pandion was afraid of “malice.” Pandion agreed to Philomela’s journey not solely because of Philomela’s tears or Procne’s request; his consent may be seen as a political gesture towards his son-in-law, Tereus, king of another land. After all, he could have asked Tereus to bring Procne to Athens to see both her old father and the sister whom she misses. Instead, however, he grants the request of the more politically powerful Tereus. Earlier in the legend, furthermore, Pandion had agreed to Procne’s marriage to Tereus although he was not “cheere” (l. 2246). This indicates that relationships between men function only through a connecting third term, the woman. These are bonds that, unlike the one between women in the Legend, are not based on trust but on power relations. The homosocial bond between Tereus and Pandion is forged not only through the normative exchange of Procne through marriage to Tereus, but also by means of the exchange involving Pandion’s other daughter, Philomela. This exchange between men is nonnormative on two counts: it takes place outside of marriage, and it entails enforced coitus. Yet, like marriage, it reaffirms the ties between them. Such a view of rape as linking the rapist and the victim’s father is founded on the role and meaning of rape in medieval England. The medieval legal view, presented in the introductory paragraphs above, makes it possible to see Tereus’s ravishment of Philomela as an aspect of his relationship with Pandion. Furthermore, as explained above, rape was related to theft—in other words, the illicit transfer of property from one owner to another. Tereus commits this offense when, upon arrival in Thrace, he abducts Philomela and hides her away in a cave within a forest as if she were stolen goods: And to a cave prively hym spedde; And in this derke cave, yif hir leste, Or leste nat, he bad hire for to reste (ll. 2311–13).

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After the rape, Tereus cuts out Philomela’s tongue to avoid his exposure: “For fere lest she shulde his shame crye / And don hym openly a vilenye” (ll. 2332–33). He then locks Philomela away “So that she myghte hym neveremore asterte” (l. 2338). This is done because of his fear of what she can do to him publicly if she openly tells her private story of what has been secretly done to her. By confining Philomela, Tereus wants to have full control over her tongue35 at once literally and conceptually. Woman is seen here as threatening and powerful. Her power lies in her rhetorical capacities. Men’s weakness is the most telling, the text suggests, precisely when they demonstrate physical force and control. Chaucer describes the rape in a few lines: By force hath this traytour don a dede, That he hath reft hire of hire maydenhede, Maugre hire hed, by strength and by his myght Lo! here a dede of men, and that a ryght! (ll. 2324–7) ... Al helpeth nat; and yit this false thef . . . (l. 2330, my emphasis)

The word thef, or theef, as it is spelled in the Wife of Bath’s prologue, carries interesting connotations for Chaucer, especially when examined in the context of the relationship between men and women. Thus, for example, after the Wife of Bath’s fifth husband hits her so hard that she “lay as [she] were deed” (l. 796), she accuses him of being a thief: “O! hastow slayn me, false theef? I seyde, / And for my land thus hastow mordred me?” (ll. 800–801). In the Wife’s case, the theft appears in the intersection between stealing her property, her land, and her life. In Philomela’s case, Chaucer uses the words reft, which suggests a theft, and thef, to describe the rape. In the Middle Ages, under English Common Law the rape of a woman was considered an affront to her male guardian. Thus rape as theft of a woman has the same basic structure in a patriarchical society as the exchange of women. Seen as an offense against Philomela’s father rather than against her as a woman, rape in this context, then, is another aspect of communication between men. The rape shows that Tereus negotiates relations by means of force, emphasized in the text by the use of the couplet “strength” and “might.”36 In the relation between Tereus and Pandion, the basic element is power—political rather than physical. In the “Legend of Philomela,” then, relations between men are mediated by women. In the exchange of a woman in a politically motivated marriage as in the case of rape, men relate to one another in terms of power.37 Chaucer’s “Legend of Philomela” shows how female relationships are not without boundaries (physical distance and marriage that transfer the

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woman to another household), yet these bonds are structured differently from those between men. Between women there is no third element; the relationship is direct. It may seem that Tereus functions as a third element between Procne and Philomela, for Procne asks him to fetch her sister from her father. This is, however, a transfer of a woman outside the traditional structure of the exchange of women. A woman initiates this transfer and it is not an exchange between men. It is one of the instances in the Legend where the traditional structure breaks down and makes possible the bonds between women in which each participant is simultaneously a partner and a boundary. In interactions between men in the Legend, boundaries are constituted and function differently. They have clear geographical limits: Pandion and Tereus each, as king, has his own territory. Pandion remains within his territory. Tereus crosses from his territory to Pandion’s twice, but he always returns to Thrace. In contrast, the bond between women is independent of geographical confines. Indeed, in the scene of Philomela’s rape Philomela cries for help to people she knows are not within the space she occupies. As an unmarried woman, Philomela is under the custody of her father and should expect his protection. In Chaucer’s revision of his source, however, she calls her sister first. While Philomela is geographically closer to her sister than to her father, her choice seems more than a simple matter of proximity. It indicates the father’s lack of power in the context of the structure of the exchange of women. Although a king, he is unable to help his daughter at the moment she is under the control of his sonin-law. He did not refuse Tereus’s request to take Philomela with him, although he did not seem to have much confidence in Tereus, nor did the old king want to part with his beloved daughter. The cry for help from the sister also indicates the strong emotional bond between the two women, the only ones who can help each other in times of trouble, as indeed happens at the end of the legend. When Procne married Tereus, she had to leave her family and follow her husband to a foreign country. There are indications of trouble for the marriage as early as the wedding night when the owl f lies about the beams of the house (l. 2253), and we are told the marriage was celebrated under the inf luence of the Furies instead of under the favor of Juno and Hymen, the deities of marriage (ll. 2249–50). These may be seen as predictions of the rape, while at the same time they foretell Procne’s marital unhappiness. Procne’s relationship with her husband does not seem to have much emotional substance. We hear nothing about her wedded life besides the fact that “Fyve yer his wif and he together dwelle” (l. 2259).

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Procne’s pining for her sister, her daily petitions to her husband, for “this was day by day al hire preyere, / With al humblesse of wif hod, word and chere” (ll. 2267–68), indicate the strength of her relationship with her sister. These two lines describing the frequency of Procne’s request to see her sister were Chaucer’s addition to his source. In Ovid’s text, Procne expresses her request only once with the alternative that she could also be sent to visit her sister: “ ‘si gratia’ dixit ‘ulla mea est, vel me visendae mitte sorori, vel soror huc veniat’ ” [if I have found any favor in your sight, either send me to visit my sister or let my sister come to me] (ll. 440–42). Another addition of Chaucer’s underscores of the two sisters’ devotion to each other: Philomela’s emotion expressed with teary eyes when she tries to convince her father to let her go. “For Philomela with salte teres eke / Gan of hire fader grace to beseke / To sen hire syster that she loveth so, / And him embraseth with her armes two” (ll. 2284–87). The tears do not appear in the Ovidian version of the story, where Philomela puts her arms around her father’s neck and coaxes him to let her visit Procne (ll. 475–77). Philomela is willing to leave her beloved father and undertake a sea voyage with a man she hardly knows, all because her sister needs her. Both sisters do all they can in order to persuade the men to bring them together. The two women have an exceptionally strong emotional bond and the determination to maintain it within the social structure controlled by men. One of the most striking manifestations of the bond between the sisters is the tapestry into which Philomela weaves a vivid description of her woes. Since Philomela does not know how to write with a pen, she weaves her story, communicating the horror of her rape to her sister. Procne’s first reaction when she receives the tapestry is described as follows: “No word she spak, for sorwe and ek for rage” (l. 2374). She becomes momentarily dumb—an Ovidian detail Chaucer chooses to rewrite: “Dolor ora repressit, / verbaque quaerenti satis indignantia linguae / defuerunt” [Grief chokes the words that rise to her lips, and her questing tongue can find no word strong enough to express her outrage] (ll. 583–85). Procne’s speechlessness ref lects absolute identification with Philomela’s situation. Grief and anger are the explicit cause of her silence, although no mention was made of her sister’s rage against Tereus earlier in the legend. Chaucer chooses to remove this information in his rewriting of his source: Ovid has an entire paragraph on Philomela’s anger when she recovers her senses after Tereus’s attack (ll. 533–48). She accuses Tereus of committing a barbarous crime that disturbs the order of things as well as the interfamilial relationships of

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father–daughter, father and son-in-law, two sisters, sister and brotherin-law, or husband and wife. . . . ait, ‘nec te mandata parentis cum lacrimis movere piis nec cura sororis nec mea virginitas nec coniugialia iura?’ omnia turbasti; paelex ego facta sororis, tu geminus coniunx, hostis mihi debita Procne! [ . . . she cried: ‘Oh, what a horrible thing you have done, barbarous, cruel wretch! Do you care nothing for my father’s injunctions, his affectionate tears, my sister’s love, my own virginity, the bonds of wedlock? You have confused all natural relations: I have become a concubine, my sister’s rival; you, a husband to both. Now Procne must be my enemy] (ll. 534–538).

Philomela’s statement in the Ovidian source that her sister will now be her enemy is eliminated from Chaucer’s retelling. After the first shock of reading the story of her sister’s rape, Procne sets out to find Philomela. Yet unlike the other story of rape in The Legend of Good Women, that of Lucrece, the story of Philomela does not end with suicide. Lucrece changed the course of Roman history after killing herself. The change Philomela makes is within her own life, a personal rather than public overcoming of her initial status as victim. Chaucer leaves his audience with the strong image of the sisters in each other’s arms: “In armes everych of hem other taketh, / And thus I let hem in here sorwe dwelle” (ll. 2381–82). Chaucer’s focus is on the solace simultaneously given and received by the two women. Ovid says that Procne folded Philomela in her arms (significantly, “pro voce manus fuit” (l. 609)), and continues the story for another 112 lines. Chaucer scrapes away this entire passage. This is probably the most significant obliteration on his part, as it not only avoids portraying women as violent avengers, but creates the textual focus on women’s bonding through grief. This ending is different from Chaucer’s other tales of rape, such as that of The Legend of Lucrece, where the rapist, Tarquinius, is punished. The fate of the rapist at the end of the “Legend of Philomela” is also different from that of other rapists in The Canterbury Tales. The knight in the “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” is tried and punished. Similarly, when Apius threatens Virginia with rape in “The Physician’s Tale,” he lands in jail, where he commits suicide. In the “Legend of Philomela,” however, Chaucer elides the ending of Ovid’s Metamorphoses where Procne takes revenge against her husband. Ovid tells how Procne’s five-year- old son, Itys, greets his mother, puts his little arms around her neck, and kisses her. Procne drags Itys off to a remote part of the house, kills him, cuts

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him up, cooks the body, and serves it to Tereus for supper. She watches Tereus as he eats, and then tells him what he has eaten. In his first sickened moment of horror he cannot move and the two sisters f lee. He pursues them with a drawn sword, when suddenly the gods turn Procne into a swallow and Philomela into a nightingale; Tereus is changed into a hoopoe (ll. 619–74). Chaucer adapts the closing scene in his legend (ll. 2371–82) only up to the point where Procne finds Philomela. He is concerned neither with the sisters’ revenge nor with their transformation.38 In the words of Ovid’s Procne: “non est lacrimis hoc” inquit “agendum, / sed ferro” [This is no time for tears, she said, but for the sword] (ll. 611–12). Ovid’s Procne declares that she is prepared for a great deed: “magnum, quodcumque paravi” (l. 619). This omission in Chaucer’s text becomes even more significant considering that Chaucer was familiar with the ending of Ovid’s story, for he had already used it in Troilus and Criseyde. In the latter, the swallow Procne sings a mournful “lay” (l. 64) about her transformation and awakens Pandarus on the morning he goes to Criseyde’s house to persuade her to fall into Troilus’s arms: The swallowe Proigne, with a sorowful lay, When morwen com, gan make hire waymentynge Whi she forshapen was; and ever lay Pandare abedde, half in a slomberynge Til she so neigh hym made hire cheterynge How Tereus gan forth hire suster take, That with the noyse of hire he gan awake. (ll. 64–70)

In these lines, there is an implicit warning of the rape of Criseyde.39 The mythological reference that brings the case of Philomela into Troilus and Criseyde raises the issue of rape within the family in the story of Criseyde. As Jane Chance has suggested, it shows Pandarus—in mental projection, at least—in “an incestuous relationship with his niece through Troilus, for he plays an ironic role as agent of ravishment.”40 Here Chaucer associates the myth of Philomela with a betrayal of trust. In the “Legend of Philomela,” when an incestuous bond occurs between a man and a woman (Tereus and Philomela), it involves power relations and the victimization of the woman. When a structurally incestuous bond exists between women (Procne and Philomela), it involves mutual sustenance. In this relationship, woman does not function as victim or third term, but as a partner, a subject. With a view of this mutually sustaining bond, Chaucer concludes his Legend: “In armes everych of them other taketh” (l. 2381).

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This last modification that Chaucer makes to his source is the most important, because it forms the impression that remains with the audience. By omitting the revenge scene, Chaucer allows Tereus to be upstaged by the two women. Philomela and her sister “in here sorwe dwelle” (l. 2382). Earlier in the legend, Chaucer wrote: “in teres lete I Progne dwelle” (l. 2348). The verb “dwelle,” to reside, indicates that Chaucer conceives of shared sorrow as a psychological space of women’s bonding. It is a communal feminine space contrasting with masculine territorial space. The patterns of female bonding in the “Legend of Philomela” can be studied by way of opposition to the “Legend of Ariadne,” another tale in Chaucer’s series. The opening lines of Ariadne’s story seem to point to a similar case of women who share an intimate bond of sisterhood and are related to each other through the same man. Ariadne and Phedra, Mynos’s two daughters, deceive their father and help Theseus kill the minotaur and escape from prison. Once Theseus is saved, however, he betrays Ariadne, abandoning her on a lonely island and running off with her sister. This closing image of Ariadne with no one to comfort her sharply contrasts with the final scene of the “Legend of Philomela.” Whereas in the “Legend of Philomela,” the male’s betrayal makes him function as a bonding agent between the two women, Theseus’s treachery in the “Legend of Ariadne” has the opposite function: he causes physical and mental distance between the two sisters who had been bonded through him in their joint effort to save him. Though the structure of women’s bonding is unique to the “Legend of Philomela” because of its plot, they are similar to patterns of female bonding that occur in other legends. The Legend of Good Women offers another example where Chaucer’s erasure and reinscription of his source cast a different light on the bond between two women that is strengthened by betrayal of a man. In the “Legend of Hypsipyle and Medea,” the eponymous heroines are connected to each other not through sisterly blood, but through a similar pattern of a man’s betrayal. Jason betrays one woman, Hypsipyle, and replaces her with Medea, whom he then abandons in favor of a third woman. Chaucer’s Medea lacks one of the famous traits of the classical Medea, a woman who slays her own children. Chaucer elides the entire end of Medea’s story and instead directs his audience to Ovid.41 Chaucer’s omission of the ending is one of the keys to the structural and conceptual connections he draws between her story and the other legends. Without the cruel conclusion, Chaucer’s Medea is characterized by womanly virtue and, above all, moral goodness.42 Yet, contrary to the “Legend of Philomela,” here there is no blood relation between the women who are betrayed by the same man. In the

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“Legend of Hypsipyle and Medea,” Chaucer creates an affinity between women that transcends boundaries between texts as well as the distances created by men’s treachery. This affinity is embodied in the intrinsic quality of the women, unrelated to blood and independent of them. This quality—goodness—is the one Chaucer chooses to emphasize in rewriting the legends. Such goodness is rhetorically embodied in the copula “and” connecting and separating the legends of Hypsipyle and Medea, and implying the potential extension of this conjunction among good women who are betrayed by the same man. Chaucer’s focus on the relationships between women would have appealed to the initial female audience for which the poem is intended.43 Furthermore, a story that focuses on women’s bonding would have worked well in Richard II’s notoriously “feminized” court. One feature of the “feminization” of Richard’s reign is, as Nicola F. McDonald has recently suggested, “the king’s sponsorship of a sorority of the garter, a significant adjunct to the prestigious Order of the Garter, founded by Edward III” in 1348.44 Richard II’s foundation of the feminine “fraternity” of the Ladies of the Garter participated in his grandfather’s attempt to revive Arthur’s Round Table. “These ladies were people who either directly or indirectly mattered in the power structures of their times.”45 Chaucer’s “Legend of Philomela” depicts a different kind of sorority, that between Procne and Philomela. To conclude, Chaucer acted as a palimpsest writer who erased and reinscribed his main source so as to reconfigure structures of women’s bonding. My analysis reveals that in Chaucer’s version, a man has no structural function as a factor in relations between women. Chaucer’s reinscribed story provides the framework for a new structure of relationships between women that subverts existing systems. In bonds between women the relationship is direct, each participant is simultaneously a partner and a boundary. This alternative is seen as positive in the text, as it is juxtaposed with male relationships and thus functions as a critique to existing structures of kinship that exclude women from power. Such a structure, which does not apply to traditional kinship, has never been examined in relation to Chaucer’s “Legend of Philomela.” It is hard to imagine how a mutilated, raped woman can be empowered without opposing her oppressor, as in the Ovidian resolution involving violent vengeance. However, this analysis has shown that although Philomela is a victim in appearance, she finds a way to overcome physical degradation and reclaim autonomy through her connection with another woman. Unveiling the palimpsestic layers of Chaucer’s text exposes the way in which Chaucer empowers women independently of men and makes the bond between women the structural substratum of his text.

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Notes 1. Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book VI, trans. Frank Justus Miller (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1946). 2. Research on the sources of this legend has also suggested that Chaucer combined two sources: Ovid and Ovide Moralisé. John Livingston Lowes, “Chaucer and the Ovide Moralisé,” PMLA 33 (1918): 302–25. Robert Worth Frank compares Philomène in Ovid Moralisé and Gower’s “Tale of Tereus” in Confessio Amantis. See Frank’s Chaucer and the Legend of Good Women (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972), p. 134. Edgar Finley Shannon offers a short discussion of Chaucer and Ovid in Chaucer and the Roman Poets (1929; repr. New York: Russell and Russell, 1964), p. 134. 3. Quotations from Chaucer are from The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson, 3rd ed. (New York: Houghton Miff lin, 1987). With respect to scholarship on space and women’s place in private and public space, there is much to say about parallels between interior physical spaces and the subjective, internal space of an individual. This is not, however, the focus of the current essay. I focused on the theme of space in my “Extimacy in ‘The Miller’s Tale,’ ” Chaucer Review 41.2 (2006): 163–84. 4. Claude Levi- Strauss, The Elementary Structures of Kinship (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969). 5. Gayle Rubin, “The Traffic in Women: Notes Toward a Political Economy of Sex,” in Toward an Anthropology of Women, ed. Rayna Reiter (London: Monthly Review Press, 1975), pp. 173–74. 6. In the economic transaction where a woman changes hands from father to husband, she functions, as Rubin pointed out, as a binding element between these men. My contribution to Rubin’s insight into kinship is that by virtue of being a third element; the woman exchanged makes the relationship between the two men an indirect one, effectively barring direct interaction. 7. Hans Kurath and Sherman M. Kuhn, eds. Middle English Dictionary (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1956), “rape,” p. 144. Also online: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/med/. 8. See George Saintsbury, “Chaucer,” in The Cambridge History of English Literature, 2; The End of the Middle Ages, ed. A.W. Ward and A.R. Waller (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1908), p. 159. 9. Among others, T.F.T. Plucknett, “Chaucer’s Escapade,” Law Quarterly Review 64 (1948): 34 [33–36]. 10. T.R. Lounsbury, Studies in Chaucer: His Life and Writings (New York: Russell & Russell, 1962), pp. 1–75. Donald Roy Howard, Chaucer: His Life, His Work, His World (New York: Dutton, 1987), p. 317. 11. Cecilia Chaumpaigne released Chaucer from all her rights of action against him “de raptu meo” on May 1, 1380. See Derek Pearsall, The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), p. 136. Cecilia Chaumpaigne’s complaint is “perhaps the one biographical fact

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12. 13.

14. 15.

16. 17.

18. 19.

20.

21. 22.

23. 24. 25.

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everyone remembers about Chaucer,” Carolyn Dinshaw, Chaucer’s Sexual Poetics (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), p. 11. See also P.R. Walts, “The Strange Case of Geoffrey Chaucer and Cecilia Chaumpaigne,” Law Quarterly Review 63 (1947): 491–515. In 1993 a new document in which “de raptu meo” does not appear at all was examined by Christopher Cannon, “Raptus in the Chaumpaigne Release and a Newly Discovered Document Concerning the Life of Geoffrey Chaucer,” Speculum 68 (1993): 74–94. Christopher Cannon, “Chaucer and Rape: Uncertainty’s Certainties,” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 22 (2000): 69 [67–92]. Sir Frederick Pollock and William Frederic Maitland, The History of English Law Before the Time of Edward I. 2nd ed., Vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1952), p. 490. Cannon, “Chaucer and Rape,” p. 73. J.B. Post, “Ravishment of Women and the Statutes of Westminster,” in Legal Records and the Historian: Papers Presented to the Cambridge Legal Conference, ed. J.H. Baker (London: Royal Historical Society, 1978), p. 153. James A. Brundage, Law, Sex and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), p. 532. Placitum de crimine raptus (“The plea of the crime of rape”) in The Treatise on the Laws and the Customs of the Realm of England Commonly Called Glanvill, ed. and trans. G.D.G. Hall (London: Wm. W. Gaunt & Sons with the Selden Society, 1983), p. 176. See also Marguerite- Marie Dubois, “L’expression du viol dans le lexique vieil- anglais,” Bulletin des Anglicistes Médiévistes 58 (Winter, 2000): 1–4. Brundage, Law, Sex and Christian Society, p. 48. Kurath and Kuhn, eds., Middle English Dictionary, “rape,” p. 144. On the development of a law of rape and property in Anglo- Saxon England, see Corinne Saunders’s chapter, “Secular Law: Rape and Raptus,” in her Rape and Ravishment in the Literature of Medieval England (Cambridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2001), pp. 33–75. For a broad analysis, see Anna Roberts, ed. Violence against Women in Medieval Texts (Gainesville: Florida University Press, 1998). On “Chaucer’s Victimized Women,” see Richard Firth Green, Studies in the Age of Chaucer 10 (1988): 3–21. Paul F. Baum, “Chaucer’s Glorious Legend,” MLN 60 (1945): 379 [377–81]. Frank, Chaucer and the Legend of Good Women, p. 140. Frank, Chaucer and the Legend of Good Women, p. 96, bases his argument on Northrop Frye’s definition of pathos as representing a hero (usually a woman or a child) with a certain weakness that appeals to our sympathy because it is in our realm of experience. Janet M. Cown, “Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women: Structure and Tone,” Studies in Philology 82 (1985): 433 [416–36]. Dinshaw, Chaucer’s Sexual Poetics, p. 75. Priscilla Martin, Chaucer’s Women: Nuns, Wives, and Amazons (London: Macmillan, 1990), p. 209.

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26. Richard Ireland, “Lucrece, Philomela (and Cecily): Chaucer and the Law of Rape,” in Crime and Punishment in the Middle Ages, ed. T.S. Haskett (Victoria: University of Victoria, 1998), pp. 37–61. 27. Jill Mann, Feminizing Chaucer (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2002), p. 46. 28. Corinne J. Saunders, “Classical Paradigms of Rape in the Middle Ages,” in Rape in Antiquity, ed. Susan Deacy and Karen F. Pierce (London: Duckworth, 1997), p. 276. 29. See especially Patricia Klindienst, “The Voice of the Shuttle Is Ours,” in Rape and Representation, eds. Lynn A. Higgins and Brenda A. Silver, Gender and Culture Series (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), pp. 35–64. Saunders, in “Classical Paradigms,” p. 263, suggests that the tale “allows Chaucer to emphasize the ways in which women are deprived of voice through male violence, and to offer the possibility of a new voice both in Philomela’s weaving and in the tale’s rewriting of its classical source.” 30. Martin, Chaucer’s Women, p. vii. 31. Referring to the story of Philomela in Book Five of Gower’s Confessio Amantis, Carolyn Dinshaw, “Quarrels, Rivals, and Rape: Gower and Chaucer,” in A Wyf Ther Was: Essays in Honour of Paule Mertens-Fonck, ed. Juliette Dor (Liège: Liège University Press, 1992), p.118 [112–22], claims that Gower’s version “is the exemplum of rape,” and sees in the act of rape “the breaking of all meaningful bonds of society . . . : Tereus breaks marriage vows, has incestuous relations with his sister-in-law, and breaks the bond of family relations; Procne breaks maternal bonds and Tereus, fed by Procne, violates the taboo against cannibalism. This is rape: it is spectacularly anomalous” (emphasis in the original). Dinshaw does not, however, discuss one meaningful bond that remains intact—that between women. 32. Esp. line 894. See also Jerome Mandel, Geoffrey Chaucer: Building the Fragments of the Canterbury Tales (Toronto: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1992), pp. 126–27. 33. Mandel, Geoffrey Chaucer: Building the Fragments, p. 126. 34. Shannon, Chaucer and the Roman Poets, p. 270. 35. The “Legend of Lucrece” is another example of how a woman brings about the destruction of a man when she publicly tells what he has done to her. Through her rhetoric, Lucrece succeeds in organizing a political uprising and banishing Tarquinius from kingship. What is interesting is that although Philomela cannot speak, she does not lose her voice and finds an alternative way to communicate with her sister: the tapestry. See my “Lucrece’s ‘myght’: Rhetorical/Sexual Potency and Potentiality in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Legend of Lucrece,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 29.1 (1999): 31–42. 36. In “The Wife of Bath’s Tale,” the Arthurian knight rapes the maid “maugree hir heed” (l. 887) and, as Chaucer tells his audience, by law the knight should pay with his head: “By cours of lawe, and sholde han lost his heed” (1992). In this case, the word “heed” connects the knight’s crime to his punishment.

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37. For a reading of rape as a test of masculinity in French literature, see Kathryn Gravdal, Ravishing Maidens: Writing and Rape in Medieval French Literature and Law (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991). 38. Shannon, Chaucer and the Roman Poets, p. 281. 39. According to Jane Chance, The Mythografic Chaucer: The Fabulation of Sexual Politics (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 1995), pp. 123–24, the allusion to the rape of Philomela also works backwards to the rape of Helene that initiated the Trojan War, and forward to the ravishing of Criseyde by Diomede. It also anticipates the ironically bold ravishment of Troilus by Criseyde in Book III. 40. Chance, The Mythografic Chaucer, p. 128. 41. Ovid, Heroides XII, p. 153. 42. See my book, Pouvoir et Autorité dans The Legend of Good Women (Paris: AMAES, 2000). 43. Among accounts of Chaucer’s primary audience, see R.F. Green, Poets and Princepleasers: Literature and the English Court in the Late Middle Ages (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980); Green’s “Women in Chaucer’s Audience,” Chaucer Review 18 (1983): 137–45. See also Paul Strohm, Social Chaucer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), as well as Strohm’s article, “Chaucer’s Audience(s): Fictional, Implied, Intended, Actual,” Chaucer Review 18 (1983): 146–54. More recently, consideration of the sincerity of Alceste’s request, “yive it to the queen,” has led Minnis, Percival, and Quinn to propose a court audience for this poem: A.J. Minnis, Oxford Guides to Chaucer: The Shorter Poems (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), p. 327; Florence Percival, Chaucer’s Legendary Good Women (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 299–323; W.A. Quinn, Chaucer’s Rehersynges: The Performability of the Legend of Good Women (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1994). On female audience, see Nicola F. McDonald, “Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women, Ladies at Court, and the Female Reader,” Chaucer Review 35 (2000): 22–42. 44. McDonald, “Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women, Ladies at Court,” 27. The Order of the Garter itself dated from 1348; the sorority was a later development. See Leo Carruthers, “ ‘Honi soit qui mal y pense’: The Countess of Salisbury and the ‘Slipt Garter,’ ” in Surface et Profondeur: Mélanges offerts à Guy Bourquin, ed. Colette Stévanovitch and René Tixier, Grendel 7 (Nancy: AMAES, 2003): 221–34. See also Leo Carruthers, “The Duke of Clarence and the Earls of March: Knights of the Garter and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” Medium Ævum 70 (2001): 66–79, repr. in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ed. Marie Borroff and Laura L. Howes (New York: Norton, 2010), pp. 217–31. 45. James L. Gillespie, “Ladies of the Fraternity of Saint George and of the Society of the Garter,” Albion 17 (1985): 278 [259–78].

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CHAPTER 9 THE MIDDLE ENGLISH BRETON LAYS AND THE MISTS OF ORIGIN Claire Vial

Awareness of generic ancestry offers evidence of the palimpsestuous nature of the “true” Middle English Breton lays.

I

dentifying the Breton lays in Middle English as a coherent corpus is a challenge for several reasons because they are rather difficult to distinguish from the romance genre. Very tellingly, in her contribution to the Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature dedicated to romance, Rosalind Field does not consider these lays as a separate group; rather, she inscribes most of them within the romance genre. In her analysis, there is no such subcategory as “Middle English Breton lays,” but instead short romances that occasionally resort to “the procedures of the Breton lai,” among which she mentions Sir Orfeo and Sir Launfal.1 Although she refers to features she deems characteristic of the Breton lais, such as “the formal brevity and the allure of Celtic magic,” she regards them as a tradition more than as a prescribed genre.2 My contention is precisely that in this particular case, generic markers consist of a well-informed inscription within a tradition of composition. Roughly speaking, the diversity of approaches— thematic, structural, or cultural3 —yields two groups of poems, which vary depending on the critic. On the one hand, one may consider the lays that are undoubtedly of Breton descent, namely Lay Le Freine and Sir Launfal, both translated from lays by Marie de France. Sir Launfal is a palimpsest in its own right, as Colette Stévanovitch’s essay in this volume demonstrates. Thomas Chestre’s translation, also referred to as Launfalus Miles, is based on a previous Sir Landevale, or Landavall, preserved in Bodleian manuscript Rawlinson C 86, and also on the anonymous Lay of Graelent, among other

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sources.4 Sir Orfeo also deserves to be grouped with them, particularly, but not solely, owing to its prologue, almost identical to the prologue in Lay Le Freine, which insists on its belonging to the lay tradition. These three lays (four if one counts the two translations of the Anglo-Norman Lanval) are the mainstay of the lays that warrant their appellation of Middle English Breton lays. Le Freine and Sir Orfeo date to the beginning, Landevale to the first half, and Sir Launfal to the end of the fourteenth century. There also exists a group of later Middle English lays, Emare, Sir Gowther, and The Erle of Tolous, all dating from approximately 1400, whose inclusion in the genre of lay is less defendable. A fourth one, Degaré (c.1325), is felt to raise questions of its own; it is sometimes taken for a parody and will not, for this reason, be considered here.5 Emare, Tolous, Gowther, and Launfal are all written in tail-rhyme stanzas, while the others remain faithful to the octosyllabic couplets of Marie de France’s lays.6 The ninth poem is Chaucer’s “The Franklin’s Tale,” of Italian origin (Il Filocolo), but whose prologue scrupulously links it with the traditional Breton lays. Paul Strohm classifies these two groups as “true” and “bogus” lays, a distinction that I will adopt in this essay: We encounter some Old French and Middle English narratives which have been deeply inf luenced by abstract ideas of the lay, and others which use the term for whatever added interest or glamour it can bring without making any significant changes in what would otherwise simply be called romances or tales. In discussing the Middle English lay we will encounter narratives where the term is “earned” and where it is “unearned” and we must distinguish between the two.7

The lay told by the Franklin can be seen as such an excellent forgery that it almost belongs to the group of the “true” lays. The present fairly general survey bespeaks the lack of definition that seems to be one of the main characteristics of the genre, since this proportionately small corpus of nine poems displays more exceptions than canonical examples. At the same time, such a hazy definition contradicts the authors’ claims: in all cases except Degaré, they clearly mark out their works as pertaining to the genre of Breton lays. This paradoxical assertion is the starting point of the present analysis: we have nine narrative poems, whose generic ambition is deliberately outlined, which implies the resort to a form of authority on the authors’ part, while the authority in question is from the outset barely discernible. What use is authority if it is untraceable? My purpose is to demonstrate that the “true lays” all explicitly share a sense of being inscribed in a “palimpsestuous” line: they are self-conscious hypertexts, to use Gérard Genette’s terminology, rather than rewritings offhandedly claiming their link with a tradition. The narrator is aware that

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he is telling an event—the “aventure” or “cas”—which had first a nonverbal, lived existence that was then translated into words so as to be kept in memory and given a title. It is now told once more in the narrator’s words. Palimpsestuous awareness disappears in the later, “bogus” lays—with the unsurprisingly problematic exception of Chaucer’s “The Franklin’s Tale.” Let us focus first on the “threshold” or opening of the lays, which is their prologue. It is not always counterbalanced by an epilogue, but sometimes with a couple of closing lines only. This opening, when it figures in the poem, asserts what one could call a prestigious lineage from which the founding members are absent. The most representative instance of this practice is found in the prologue common to Le Freine and Sir Orfeo (regardless of which came first): Incipit Lay le Freine

Incipit Sir Orfeo

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

We redeth oft and findeth ywrite – And this clerkes wele it wite – Layes that ben in harping Ben yfounde of ferli thing. Sum bethe of wer and sum of wo, And sum of joie and mirthe also And sum of trecherie and of gile, Of old aventours that fel while And sum of bourdes and ribaudy, And mani ther beth of fairy. Of al thinges that men seth, Mest o love for sothe thai beth. In Breteyne bi hold time This layes were wrought, so seith this rime. When kinges might our yhere Of ani mervailes that ther were, Thai token an harp in gle and game, And maked a lay and gaf it name. Now of this aventours that weren yfalle, Y can tel sum ac nought alle. Ac herkneth lordinges, sothe to sain, Ichil you telle Lay le Frayn.

We redeth oft and findeth y-write, And this clerkes wele it wite, Layes that ben in harping Ben y-founde of ferli thing: Sum bethe of wer and sum of wo, And sum of joie and mirthe also, And sum of trecherie and of gile, Of old aventours that fel while; And sum of bourdes and ribaudy, And mani ther beth of fairy. Of al thinges that men seth, Mest o love, forsothe, they beth. In Breteyne this layes were wrought, First y-founde and forth y-brought, Of aventours that fel bi dayes, Wherof Bretouns maked her layes. When kinges might our y-here Of ani mervailes that ther were, Thai token an harp in gle and game And maked a lay and gaf it name. Now of this aventours that weren y-falle Y can tel sum, ac nought alle. Ac herkneth, lordinges that ben trewe, Ichil you telle of “Sir Orfewe.”

The unstable generic identity is first conveyed through the crisscrossing of references to written, oral, and sung narratives, the latter accompanied by music.8 The emphasis is placed on telling and hearing by the grouped references at the end of the prologue (“tel,” “herkneth,” “telle”), even though the first lines insist on the written form of the lays. A wide range of themes is announced, broader than the variety of themes to be found in the extant French lays.9 Strong stress is laid on the recurrence of mirabilia and the love plot,10 all the more since the lines mentioning them are

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situated at the end of the descriptive enumeration: “And many ther beth of fairy / . . . Mest o love for sothe thai beth” (ll. 10–12). Preceding lays are referred to only vaguely: a transformation occurs from the indefinite “sum layes” (ll. 3–10) to the specific “this lays” (ll. 14 and 13, respectively). The most prominent lexical field remains that of the making of the lay itself: see in Orfeo “wrought” (l. 13), “y-founde” (l. 14), “y-brought” (l. 15), and “maked” (ll. 16, 20). The lay focuses on the circumstances of its production, which testify to a process of metamorphosis implying a specific chronology: the lay was first the aventure (as in French)—three mentions in the prologue—which took place at an unspecified time.11 It reached the ears of the harpist kings, who turned it into a musical lay and “gave it a name,” its title. The originary event is distinguished from its narration, and the precise nature of the narrative is not specified; it is simply “a lay.” Thus the generic identification of the poem is based less on the clear definition of a genre than on a recollection of the process that engendered it, the ultimate stage of which is the present speaker’s reappropriation of the past narrative. Pondering the relationship of Sir Orfeo to the romance genre and our reception of the poem, R.H. Nicholson underlines this effect of threshold within the threshold, the conscious shift from past to present in a continuous line of lay-makers.12 Lastly, the name of the lay is simultaneously the title of the sung narrative, that of the melody that was once played in counterpoint and of the tale we are about to hear. These three steps offer the exact literary ref lection of the technical reality of the lay, for all we may assume about it. The original musical lays commemorated an extraordinary event—not exclusively Celtic or legendary—in the form of a melody played on the harp, occasionally accompanied by a song, the two referred to by a title that apparently pointed to both the melody and the event.13 In the case of Sir Orfeo, the closing lines confirm that the process of elaboration is the key to the identification of the narrative and a guarantee of its quality: Explicit Sir Orfeo 597. 598. 599. 600. 601. 602. 603. 604. 605.

Harpours in Bretaine after than Herd hou this mervaile bigan, And made herof a lay of gode likeing, And nempned it after the king. That lay “Orfeo” is y-hote; Gode is the lay, swete is the note. Thus com Sir Orfeo out of his care: God graunt ous alle wele to fare! Amen! Explicit

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Having told the adventure, the speaker deliberately draws the audience out of it, recalling how the harp players heard it and turned it into a lay, which they named after the main character. The threefold structure already present in the prologue is repeated here: the adventure, the sung lay, the name. Paradoxically, by dwelling on the authenticating origin of the tale, the teller exposes the f law inherent in his own narrative: “Gode is the lay, swete is the note” (l. 602); the poem ends with the evocation of the melody, the only part of the lay it is unable to reproduce. And yet, the musical air is mentioned in the present tense, as though it were part and parcel of the context of narration. The first half-line of line 602, “Gode is the lay,” suggests a merging between the narrative just told and the lay first composed after hearing of the adventure. The last eighty lines of Le Freine are unfortunately missing. This lacuna was filled by Henry Weber’s translation of Marie de France’s Anglo-Norman original, in which there was no equivalent of the prologue of the Middle English rendering.14 Weber’s archaizing translation, made in 1880, offers a simplified finale to the lay compared to that of Orfeo, but nevertheless insists, as Orfeo does, on the frame that keeps the events at a distance from the audience by recalling the role of the teller:15 “Thus ends the lay of tho maidens bright / Le Frain and Le Codre yhight” (ll. 406–7). This plain conclusion is the counterpoint to the threshold of the narrative as uttered at the end of the prologue: “Befel a cas in Bretayne / Whereof was made Lay Le Frein” (ll. 23–4). These two lines brief ly sum up the theoretical modus operandi mentioned more explicitly earlier in the prologue: the adventure (“cas”) preceded the lay and the title it received. So, both Le Freine and Orfeo display a symmetrical frame introducing and retreating from the main narrative, at the end of which the present “dit” of the adventure replaces the former sung event, the original lay. Such a shifting process may be observed already in Marie de France.16 Launfal does not open with as wide-ranging a prologue as those of Orfeo and Le Freine, though it begins by an introductory stanza taking up the motif of the lay’s concern for its own genesis:

Incipit Sir Launfal 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Be doughty Arthours dawes That helde Engelond yn good lawaes, There fell a wonder cas Of a ley that was ysette, That hyght “Launval” and hatte yette. Now herkeneth how hyt was!

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The essential structural elements are there: the “cas,” the lay made from it, and the name it was given. This process omits the sung and melodic elements, the role played by harper-kings. This unadorned introduction suggests that the audience knew the various meanings of the term “lay,” which was also the case in Marie de France’s original: L’aventure d’un autre lai, cum ele avient, vus cunterai: fait fu d’un mut gentil vassal; en bretans l’apelent Lanval. (ll. 1–4)17

The ending of Chestre’s Launfal stands apart from the vagueness noted in Orfeo, Le Freine, and Landevale: “Thomas Chestre made this tale / of the noble knyght Syr Laundeval” (ll. 1039–40). This detail can be seen as one more instance of Chestre’s practice throughout, which consists of amplifying his tale through explanation, an attitude that makes him miss the point of the lay, according to Spearing.18 Such a reference in conclusion can be seen as an exception to the implicit rule observable in the other lays: absence of definition and reference to an authority of unknown origin, where the emphasis is laid on the genesis and not on the ultimate author. It is true that Marie de France also names herself in her works, for instance in the Lai de Guigemar: “Oëz, seignurs, ke dit Marie, Ki en sun tens pas ne s’oblie” (ll. 3–4). But when doing so, she describes her role as that of go-between, the keeper of adventures that otherwise might be wiped from people’s memories: “Plusurs en ai oi conter, Ne[s] voil laisser ne oblier” (Prologue, ll. 39–40). Moreover with Chestre, the poem becomes a “tale.” The name “Launfal” is not transferred to the title of his narrative, as was the case in the introductory lines, as though the author had forgotten its specificity in the meantime and pointed at it for what he really thought it was: “a tale.” He does so regardless of earlier practice, but also of the poetic interest there might be in inserting word-for-word parallelism between the opening and ending lines of his narrative. Actually, his late version of the Lanval story could be compared to the second wave of lays dating from the end of the fourteenth century, when the generic claim is more akin to a captatio benevolentiae than to a concern for the original nature of the work. Landevale’s ending is closer to Marie’s original, almost dramatic in the parallelism achieved between form and content. Both Lanval and Landevale end abruptly and are deprived of generic reference at this point: “Nul hum n’en oï plus parler, / Ne jeo n’en sai avant cunter” /

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“Of hym syns herde never man / No further of Landevale telle I can.” The final episode of the adventure, when Lanval is taken away to the otherworld by his fairy mistress, brings the narrative to a rapid close: their “elopement” prevents further narration. The absence of this part of the frame offers a meaningful variation in comparison with the ending of the other lays mentioned so far. The hero, though restored to his knightly status, immediately vanishes from the world of humans. Thus this lay, too, is generically undefined, in the sense that the teller’s sudden silence inscribes a final blank into the narrative (in some ways recalling the abrupt stop in the governess’s narrative at the end of Henry James’s Turn of the Screw). The explicit contents of prologues and conclusions consistently display a tendency to blur formal and thematic landmarks. We are faced with the intertwining of literacy and orality, the polysemous title, the lexical instability of the generic term “lay,” and multiple narrative potentialities since the reader/audience is proleptically precipitated into the topic of aventure linking mirabilia and contingency. The source material is described as both age- old and authentic (see the lexical field of “befelle”). The only area where we find any degree of specification concerns the motif of the making of the lay, suggesting the importance of craftsmanship and competence, which will be absent from the later lays. To put it brief ly, the “true,” earlier lays display a memory of their layered composition, whereas their later counterparts merely “seek after,” as the narrator of Gowther suggests: “A law of Breyten long y soghht” (28). This is also where the implicit contents of the “peritext,” or envelope of the texts, have a part to play: the authors of these Middle English lays, without overtly saying so, place themselves at a certain point in the chronological chain of composition. Going back to their source, on the verge of recounting the adventure, they suggest a parallelism with the Breton lords and, like them, they give the audience the name of the lay. Some of the greatness of those harpists of the past cannot but be associated with the teller of the present, all the more since, as in Le Freine and Orfeo, their lay has become this lay. Even though the new narratives also expose a loss, since the teller cannot sing nor play an instrument, the song, though absent from the “dit,” remains. It will remain like a contextual trait recalling the refined atmosphere surrounding the performance of the sung lays of the past. The unfolding of the present lay exhibits its nature as a rewriting of a prestigious, if intangible, original, marked by a process of elaboration that is complex and consequently all the more fascinating, particularly thanks to the ephemeral, magical, perhaps heavenly element of the harp performance. The explicit qualities of this palimpsest are sufficiently precise

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and evocative to catch the audience’s attention: the rewriting promises suspense, glamour, and authenticity. The audience is also warned that they must expect the unexpected. The concern for genre, which fulfills the function of a welcoming and leave-taking rite, frames the narrative, producing a closed form that outlines the consubstantial uniqueness of adventure.19 The last element of authority lies in the fact that the event now told has already been turned into a lay in the past: the wonders it narrates have thus already been deemed worthy of telling, and by a select audience at that. Such a sequence evoking the three foundational aspects of the narrative lay—the adventure, the melody, the title—conveys no less than the author’s awareness of the palimpsestic nature of the narrative. Conversely, the primary characteristic of the later Middle English lays, to which I will now turn, is the loss of this awareness even as expressed merely in the form of a topos. I shall now address the incipits and explicits of Emare, Sir Gowther, and Erle of Tolous, and try to assess the losses and gains of their generic degenerescence in terms of palimpsestic manipulation. Emare is deprived of a generic prologue; its framing device provides a religious background in the form of a prayer to Christ and the Virgin. The opening statement simply explains that the speaker will “telle / . . . of a lady fair and free.” We find no reference to an adventure, its poetic or musical rendering, or to previous tellers of the story. In a manner faintly recalling that of the Gawain poet, the speaker announces a mixture of “myrght” and “mornynge” (20–21). The only explicit allusion to the Breton lays is to be found six lines before the last and contains no reference whatsoever to the making of the lay. It sounds more like an afterthought of sorts, whereas the main hypotext is the Constance- Griselda motif: Explicit Emare 1030. 1031. 1032. 1033. 1034. 1035. 1036.

Thys ys on of Brytayne layes, That was vsed by olde dayes, Men callys “playn þe garye.” Iheso, þat settes yn þy trone, So graunte vs wyth þe to w[o]ne, In þy perpetualle glorye! Amen. Explicit Emare

The framing structure is fraught with Christian piety and the generic inscription is unstable, reaching at once toward the “tale” (948) and the “story” (1029) genres prior to this final identification as a Breton

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lai, which is both artificial and meaningful: among other secondary benefits, Rosalind Field suggests the need to give literary justification to “the secularization of a tale-type which elsewhere merges with the hagiographic.”20 Sir Gowther refers to a lay in the opening and ending lines, but again this allusion is framed by a prayer to Christ. In this particular case, the opening stresses the edifying quality of the narrative; one manuscript even introduces it as a saint’s life, an attitude that of course puts the forthcoming mirabilia into a Christian perspective.21 The incipit, though, is substantially more sophisticated than Emare. The invocation to the Trinity is followed by a proleptic allusion to the literary motif of devilish fatherhood, in its turn followed by a contrapuntal invocation to Mary and Christ. The careful thematic alternation continues with a close-up on the main protagonist of the story, a “warlocke greytt” (22), preceding the prayer to Christ, which serves a hinge to the core of the narrative, as can be seen in the quotation below. The generic references are rather blurred: in the incipit, the topos of the historicity of the wonders is taken up in a fashion redolent of the Orfeo and Freine prologues.22 But the original adventure is not distinguished from the lay, whose nature shifts to that of a “tale.” The lay is again pointed out in the explicit, but in its written form only (“wreton in parchemeyn,” 751), with no mention of a title: St. 3 Sir Gowther

Explicit Sir Gowther

25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

751. 752. 753. 754. 755. 756. 757.

Jesu Cryst, that barne blythe, Gyff hom joy, that lovus to lythe Of ferlys that befell. A law of Breyten long y soghht, And owt ther of a tale ybroghht, That luf ly is to tell.

This is wreton in parchemeyn, A story bothe gud and fyn Owt off a law of Breyteyn. Jesu Cryst, Goddys son, Gyff us myght with Hym to won, That Lord that is most of meyn. Amen Explicit Syr Gother

Whatever the reference to the genre of the lay meant for the narrator, it is literally enclosed within the limits of the tale as exemplum. We also feel closer to Malory, and his urge to note events before they disappear. Ultimately, Gowther is not a “true lay” because it is so many things at once and can serve many different purposes.23 As was the case with Emare, the generic claim relies on the reader’s supposed foreknowledge of the genre of the lay. Erle of Tolous offers the same Christian framing as Gowther, with an invocation to Christ on the Cross (opening lines) and Christ as Redeemer

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(closing lines). There is no preliminary generic reference to the lay, let alone to a process of composition. The narrative is only a tale from ancient times, recalling in a shadowy way the topos of adventure and its translation into a narrative: St. 1 Erle of Tolous 1. Leve lordys, y schall you telle 2. Of a tale, some tyme befelle 3. Farre yn unknowthe lede:

True, the generic references return with a vengeance in the conclusion of the narrative, but they do so hyperbolically: the speaker is seized with a fit of generic identification. Within the space of seventeen lines, the tale is considered in turn as a “romaunse” (l. 1198), a “geste . . . cronyculed in Rome” (l. 1214) and at last “a lay of Breteyne called hyt is” (l. 1215). The tension between fiction and historicity, orality and literacy, emphasizes the palpability of the events, as both historical truth and tangible document. The centripetal dynamics at work in the reassertion of the closed form of the palimpsestuous “true” lays tends to be negated by multiple generic inscriptions. On the surface of things, we still have an envelope form complete with a closing peritext, but its effect is rather to emphasize the shifting nature of the tale than to call to mind the original lay-makers. It is a partial failure of ref lexivity, an imperfect circularity, conveying the fact that the noun “lay” has now changed cultural meaning.24 Over time, the generative process described, however succinctly, in the Middle English lays of the first generation disappeared. Only the term “lay” remained, as the sole reference to an original authority, a synecdoche of sorts, a trace forced to stand for the successive steps of its composition, particularly the musical, aristocratic element of the original poem emphasized in the earlier Middle English lays. This original was now absent, and the later lays did not pretend to be its literary palimpsests. The term “Breton lay” bore the implicit added meaning “one of many,” as a representative of a group considered as a huge stockroom. The noun “lay” also concentrated the multifarious narrative potentialities that were evoked in the long prologues and brought into play in the wonderful adventures of the first four lays, Le Freine, Orfeo, and the two versions of the Lanval story. The link between the genre stated and the actual contents was loosened in several respects. In the later lays, the places of action have nothing Breton about them (neither from Britain nor from continental Brittany):25 in Emare, although the heroine is daughter to an emperor named Artyus, he has nothing in common with Arthur of

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Britain; the identified loci of action are Galicia and Rome. Gowther takes place in Austria, Germany, and Rome; Tolous in Germany, too, with the counties of Toulouse and Barcelona as counterpoints. The narrative coherence and straightforwardness of the earlier adventures disappear. The Roman tropism of the narratives and their frames with prayers to Christ and the Virgin are sustained by a prevailing Christian moral not to be found in earlier lays. The pursuit of love loses the central role it fulfilled in the older lays. Eventually, the three essential elements describing the original Breton lays remain, if at all, in a fragmented form only: Emare alludes to the sung narrative of “jugglers” (ll. 12, 24); Gowther mentions wonders (ll. 12, 27); Erle of Tolous alludes once to the authenticity of the narrative (l. 8). One cannot say, though, that the choice of the term “lay” by the authors composing at the end of the fourteenth century is made off handedly: it suggests their wish to distinguish their narrative from the tale and romance genres. If the brevity of the narratives is an apparent similarity to the lays of the beginning of the fourteenth century, the absence of concern for detailed generic definition—the loss of the reference to the lay-making process—suggests experimentation with a short form of romance disguised under several labels, including that of the lay, which offers a greater degree of freedom in content and form, combined with an aristocratic aura. Such a relationship between genres would be analogous, for instance, to the connection between the contemporary novel and the short story. The case of “The Franklin’s Tale” brings together two extremes: the tale is not a lay, but the envelope of the narrative is such a scrupulous imitation of the earlier Middle English lays that one would be tempted to read it as one of them, in the same way, perhaps, as we would like to think that Walpole’s Strawberry Hill is indeed a Gothic palace. If we bear in mind the thematic and structural criteria displayed by the lays that preceded it (both in their prologues and narratives), “The Franklin’s Tale” is an anti-lay, not least because of the length of the lines. Thematically, the love-at-first- sight topos is strictly contained within the scope of rationality and verisimilitude: there is nothing so alien to the radiant stasis of the fairy palace in Sir Orfeo (ll. 351–75) as the May revels where Aurelius first sees Dorigen. The lays composed by the passionate Aurelius display no circumstances similar to those of “true” Breton lays. That the plot should take place in Brittany, with England as a secondary location, mainly fulfills a naturalistic concern for a rocky coast subject to the tides, not at all the possibility of an encounter with the Celtic otherworld. The dawning, development, and persistence of love, along with magic, are made explicit and integrated into an exploration of the

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notion of gentilesse. The narrator insists on the “magyk natureel” (ll. 1125, 1155) that has to be fetched from Orleans, and which is duly paid for at the outset. One may even wonder whether there is an adventure, in the sense the term has in the lays, in light of the limited role played by marvels, as opposed, for instance, to the supernatural wish-fulfillment pattern of the Lanval story. The conjugal crisis brought about by the rash promise is resolved through extensive discussion and sustained adhesion to the notion of “truth.” At the same time, if we compare the respective prologues of the earlier and later Middle English lays we have scrutinized so far, then obviously the Franklin displays a careful and faithful concern for the generic tradition: The Franklin’s Prologue 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Thise olde gentil Britouns in hir dayes Of diverse aventures maden layes, Rymeyed in hir firste Briton tonge; Whiche layes with hir instrumentz they songe, Or elles redden hem, for hir plesaunce. And oon of hem have I in remembraunce, Whiche I shal seyn, with good-wyl, as I kan.

But such surface-level conformity is deceptive: the obvious attention paid to the genre is undermined by the very excess of imitative zeal, which ends up in an overabundance of inaccuracies and a tendency to blur whatever specifications existed in the earlier lays. The poet-kings become the “gentil Britons,” undoubtedly an announcement of the central concept of gentilesse explored in the main body of the tale. Lines 2 to 4 suggest the anteriority of a narrative lay over the musical performance, whereas the instrumental melody and the song of the adventure are traditionally simultaneous. The Franklin does not take any risk as to the actual instrument(s) involved (l. 4); furthermore, the two possibilities suggested in lines 4 and 5 do not correspond to the practice set forth in the “true” lays, which never allude to a narration achieved without a musical counterpoint. All things considered, all of the keywords are there, but the pieces of the puzzle do not fit: we have the impression of a fancy dress rather than an authentic garment. The short conclusion of the narrative sustains the idea that the teller has lost sight of its nature: what was first introduced as a “lay” has become a “tale” (“I kan namoore; my tale is at an ende,” last line), which joins the huge store of the pilgrims’ tales. As is the case with the later lays, the ref lexive circular

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structure is broken. In other words, the vigilant faithfulness displayed in the choice of generic markers—in the two senses of genre and engendering process—exposes the Franklin’s narrative as an imitation. Of course one can always wonder about the reasons behind such “mistakes,”26 knowing that Chaucer had access to the lays in the Auchinleck manuscript.27 It is more consistent and satisfying to think that he deliberately created his Franklin as an amateur of lays, still absorbed in the memory he had of them and sincerely devoted to re- creating the feeling of a “true palimpsest.” Indeed, among all the prologues analyzed here, his is the only one where the activity of the storyteller is explicitly depicted in terms of “remembrance.” In a thought-provoking essay, Steele Nowlin analyzes the detour via the label and prologue of a Breton lay as a distancing strategy to make it possible for the characters and readers to reconsider the possibilities of action within a given world and time.28 Drawing, in the same way as its late fourteenth- century counterparts, on the stored knowledge of the genre among the readers, the Franklin’s so- called Breton lay provides an open space for ref lection leading to corrected action as regards the verbalization and fulfillment of the numerous promises made in the narrative. In the wake of Loomis’ analysis, Nowlin insists on Chaucer’s knowledge of the Auchinleck manuscript, but does not question the accuracy of the palimpsestic information introduced by the Franklin in the prologue of his tale. He chooses to stress what I think are superficial similarities with the Orfeo prologue, outlining their common nostalgia for “an imagined past” preceding the act of storytelling proper.29 In fact, the notion that this prologue should imperfectly transpose the prologues of the earlier lays can only add water to Nowlin’s mill: he writes that the Franklin “calls the pilgrims not into the ancient world of Brittany but into his textual reconstruction of that world.”30 Reconstruction is indeed the word: the Franklin pays tribute to a genre he cherishes—for reasons that help f lesh out his character and his characters—by carefully re- creating a threshold for what we know is not a lay. The detour is longer, perhaps, than Nowlin says, but nonetheless operative. One may also imagine that Chaucer adopted a clever standpoint and tried to nip criticisms about the moral of his tale in the bud by placing it within a genre not attached solely to a Christian outlook.31 This is not incompatible with the suggestion that awareness of origins and layers of composition, a motif inseparable from the “true” lays, was known to Chaucer the connoisseur, and that he deliberately turned it into an element of characterization of his Franklin. This awareness is thus to be seen as part and parcel of the Franklin’s veneration for such values as truth

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and pledge. His lay is a faithful counterfeit, whereas the “bogus” lays of the second generation had only to reap the twofold benefit of artistic and literary merit combined with thematic imprecision to increase the attractiveness of their narratives. Having lost the initial consciousness of the palimpsestic process of creation and performance, “bogus” lays had less and less to do with an intrinsically elusive tradition whose indefinable charm contained the seed of its own subversion. Notes 1. Rosalind Field, “Romance in England, 1066–1400,” in The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, ed. David Wallace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 173 [152–76]. Field provides a minimal definition of the Breton lai as composed by Marie de France: “economically enigmatic tales of love and magic, focusing on female action, [which] created in the Breton lai an alternative to the long narratives of war and chivalry” (p. 154). She does not address the specific issue of their Middle English counterparts in any way besides silhouetting them against Marie’s background. 2. Field, “Romance in England,” p. 173, and, when introducing the Auchinleck manuscript, a major source in romance—and lai—material, Field refers to “the inclusion of short, more lyrical pieces under the guise of the Breton lai” (p. 170). 3. Regarding this type of approach, see John B. Beston, “How Much Was Known of the Breton Lai in Fourteenth- Century England?” Harvard English Studies 5 (1974): 319–36. 4. Concerning the various adaptations of the Lanval story, see (among others) Mortimer J. Donovan, The Breton Lay: A Guide to Varieties (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1969), especially ch. 3, “The Middle English Breton Lays in Couplets,” and ch. 5, “The Middle English Breton Lay in Tail-Rhyme Stanza.” 5. Degaré raises more than one problem of identification; the speaker does not refer to a particular genre, and neither uses a generic label nor describes a lay composition process. The criteria grounding its identification as a lay are the place of action in Brittany, the fairy element, and the univocity and brevity of the adventure, to which can be added the absence of a Christian perspective. On the interpretation of this lay as a parody, see Beston, “How Much Was Known,” 323. 6. All references are based on the following edition: Anne Laskaya and Eve Salisbury, eds. The Middle English Breton Lays (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications for TEAMS, 1995). See also the electronic versions of Lay le Freine: http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/freiint.htm Sir Orfeo: http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/orfint.htm Sir Degaré: http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/degint.htm

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7. See Paul Strohm, “The Origin and Meaning of Middle English Romaunce,” Genre 10 (1977): 1–28, esp. 25–26. The f loating generic identification is addressed in exactly the same terms by R.H. Nicholson when referring to “those lais which have always struck readers as the truest examples of the genre” in his “Sir Orfeo: A ‘Kynges Noote,’ ” Review of English Studies 36.142 (May 1985): 171 [161–79]. 8. On the interaction between literacy and orality, see especially Roy M. Liuzza, “Sir Orfeo: Sources, Traditions, and the Poetics of Performance,” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 21.2 (1991): 269–84. 9. Beston, “How Much Was Known,” 327–36. 10. On the gradual loss of the sense of adventure in the Middle English Breton lays, see Beston, “How Much Was Known,” 334. 11. It bears reminding that in Chrétien de Troyes, “the courtly adventure is a fortuitous and puzzling event taking place in a magical atmosphere,” according to Georges Matoré, Le vocabulaire et la société médiévale (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1985), p. 186 (my translation). 12. Nicholson, “Sir Orfeo,” 162: “The introductory description of the genre is summarily useful in itself, but more importantly it provides a context for the story, recognizing both historical origins and modern performance.” Nicholson chooses to set the lays not against Marie’s background, but against the background of romance at large: “The English lais simply are different from those of Marie. We might fairly say that they comprise a late subgenre of the short romance, rather than a late, decadent, recrudescence of a genre epitomized in Marie’s lais” (173). At length he provides a “fair” definition: “It is a story-telling genre, distinguished less by its subject-matter or verse form than by the kind of story it tells (the pleasurable recovery of prosperity or place after a season or more of distress), and its articulation of that story by two linked plots” (174). This definition notably does away with the necessity of assessing the envelopes of the lays. 13. See Constance Bullock-Davies, “The Form of the Breton Lay,” Medium Aevum 42 (1973): 18–31. This analysis of the musical Breton lays is mainly based on literary sources such as Gottfried von Strassbourg’s Tristan, the Anglo-Norman Roman de Horn, and the Old Norse Strandar Lioth (Lay of the Coast). 14. See A.C. Spearing’s comments in “Marie de France and Her Middle English Adapters,” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 12 (1990): 126 n. 14 [117–56]. 15. For a study of a similar dynamic of distancing between original and translation, see in this volume Sharon M. Rowley’s discussion of the handling of authorial asides in the Old English version of Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica. 16. Marie insists on the musical quality of the lays in the Lai du Chèvrefeuille: Tristram a Wales s’en rala / Tant que sis uncles le manda. / Pur la joie qu’il ot eüe / De s’amie qu’il ot veüe / E pur ceo k’il aveit escrit / Si cum la reïne l’ot dit / Pur les paroles remembrer / Tristram,

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17.

18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

25.

26. 27.

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ki bien saveit harper / En aveit fet un nuvel lai / Asez briefment le numerai / Gotelef l’apelent en engleis / Chevrefoil le nument Franceis. / Dit vus en ai la verité / Del lai que j’ai ici cunté (ll. 105–118). Similarly, in Guigemar: De cest cunte k’oï avez / Fu Guigemars li lais trovez / Que hum fait en harpe e en rote. / Bon en est a oïr la note (ll. 883–86). For all citations from Marie de France, see Lais de Marie de France, ed. Karl Warnke; transl., notes, pres. Laurence Harf-Lancner, Lettres gothiques (Paris: Livre de Poche, 1990). The generative process of lay-making is recalled by Marie primarily but not solely in the prologue introducing her twelve lays: De lais pensai, k’oïz aveie. / Ne dutai pas, bien le saveie / ke pur remembrance les firen / Des aventures k’il oïrent / Cil ki primes les comencierent / E ki avant les enveierent. / Plusurs en ai oï conter / Nes voil laisser ne oblier. / Rimé en ai e fait ditié / Soventes fiez en ai veillié! (ll. 33–42). The Middle English translation of Launfal known as Sir Landevale begins in medias res and therefore cannot serve as a comparison here. See Spearing, “Marie de France,” 148–56. On adventure and its function in Middle English Breton lays, see Spearing, “Marie de France,” 119. Field, “Romance in England,” 175. British Museum Royal manuscript 17.B. XLIII, quoted by Donovan, The Breton Lay, p. 231. See l. 15 in both prologues as quoted at the beginning of this essay. Laskaya and Salisbury, eds., The Middle English Breton Lays, pp. 264–5. Whether the pleasure of reception is diminished by this imperfect circular structure remains debatable; Nicholson, “Sir Orfeo,” 162, argues, “To recognize a designed structure of enclosed and enclosing tales is to perceive at once . . . something of the mechanics of our involvement, the means to our pleasure.” What if the framing device conveys generic undecidability instead of generic assertion? It will be recalled that Orfeo is an English lord reigning in Thrace (the “former name” of Winchester, 47–50); much of the action takes place in the Celtic otherworld. The plot of Lay Le Freine is transposed to Cornwall (“In the west cuntré woned tuay knights,” l. 29) from its original location in Brittany: Le lai del Freisne vus dirai / sulunc le cunte que jeo sai. / En Bretaine jadis maneient / dui chevaler, veisin esteient (ll. 1–4). The Lanval story is situated in Arthurian Britain and the fairy kingdom. See Strohm’s brief comments, “The Origin and Meaning,” 27–28, and Beston, “How Much Was Known,” 329. See Laura Hibbard Loomis, “Chaucer and the Breton Lays of the Auchinleck Manuscript,” Studies in Philology 38 (1941): 14–33. The manuscript contains, among other texts, Lay Le Freine, Sir Orfeo, Sir Degaré, and several romances.

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28. Steele Nowlin, “Between Precedent and Possibility: Liminality, Historicity, and Narrative in Chaucer’s ‘The Franklin’s Tale,’ ” Studies in Philology 103.1 (Winter 2006): 47–67. 29. Nowlin, “Between Precedent and Possibility,” 52. 30. Nowlin, “Between Precedent and Possibility,” 51. 31. See Kathryn Hume, “Why Chaucer Calls ‘The Franklin’s Tale’ a Breton Lai,” Philological Quarterly 51.2 (1972): 365–79.

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CHAPTER 10 ENQUIRIES INTO THE TEXTUAL HISTORY OF THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY SIR LAMBEWELL (LONDON, BRITISH LIBRARY, ADDITIONAL 27897) Colette Stévanovitch

The mid-seventeenth- century romance Sir Lambewell incorporates accretions from various periods, which reflect the tastes of various audiences and coexist as in a palimpsest.

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he anonymous Sir Lambewell of the Percy Folio Manuscript in the British Library (Additional MS 27897) could be termed a palimpsest, if this word is taken figuratively to refer to a work preserving traces of earlier layers of text. While medieval scribes reused parchment by scraping or washing away previous writing to replace it with text of more immediate interest, medieval authors recycled preexisting works. A poem with a long history of transmission behind it, like the mid-seventeenth-century Sir Lambewell, is a fascinating object of study in this respect. It bears the mark of generations of scribes, performers, and rewriters not merely adding inevitable corruption to the text, but adapting it to the evolving state of the English language and the tastes of different audiences. Marie de France’s Lai de Lanval was written in the twelfth century. Marie claims she based her lays on Breton material, but there is no way of recovering her sources and assessing her degree of indebtedness to them. To all intents and purposes, therefore, I shall consider her Lai de Lanval as the original form of the Lanval story. Marie’s lay was probably translated into Middle English at the beginning of the fourteenth century.1 Three manuscripts of the Middle English Lanval story are extant (plus a number of fragments, left aside in the present essay), differing from

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one another in varying degrees, all of them separated by at least a century from the original translation. They are traditionally (though perhaps misleadingly)2 referred to by the name of the main character: Launfal, Landeval, Lambewell, all variations on the original name Lanval. • Sir Launfal, by Thomas Chestre. London, British Library, Cotton MS Caligula A.ii (fifteenth century) • Sir Landeval, anonymous. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MS C 86 (end of the fifteenth century) • Sir Lambewell, anonymous. London, British Library, Additional MS 27897 or “Percy Folio Manuscript” (1650), the main object of the present study Thomas Chestre’s Sir Launfal differs from the other two by extensive rewriting due to the use of a stanzaic verse form and to the incorporation of episodes borrowed from other sources. It is the only item of the group that can claim status as a distinct work. Sir Landeval and Sir Lambewell differ from each other mainly in details. Neither of these versions is a direct ancestor of any of the others,3 so that each of the three may and does preserve original readings altered in the other two, side by side with innovations of its own. The original version of a medieval text and its most recent representative are two points in a continuum, of which we often have only a few witnesses.4 The means of transmission of medieval texts imply that each copy or each performance differs from the preceding ones. A performer in front of an audience tended to rephrase the lines while retaining their rhymes and general sense. A scribe could misread words and produce an entirely different meaning. Both updated the poem in matters of vocabulary and grammar. Many differences among the various versions of the Lanval story are obviously due to memorial transmission, as was shown by Knight.5 Scribal transmission is just as obviously accountable for some readings, for instance the first line of Sir Lambewell: Doughty in king Arthures dayes (Sir Lambewell, l. 1)6

Furnivall allows the reading to stand and justifies it in a note: “= In doughty king: Cp. ‘good my Lord,’ &c.” 7 However, in good my Lord, both the possessive and the adjective refer to the noun, whereas in doughty in king the preposition is supposed to apply to the whole noun cluster and should consequently be in initial position. Comparison with the other two versions makes it possible to recover the original reading: Be doughty Artours dawes (Sir Launfal, l. 1) Sothly by Arthurys day (Sir Landeval, l. 1)

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Doughty rather than the empty adverb sothly has every chance of being the right reading, and its logical position is after the preposition as in Sir Launfal. The transition from be doughty to doughty in and sothly by can be explained by copying error. Somewhere in the process of transmission some scribe must have omitted in/be or doughty, then realized his mistake and written the word above the line without clearly indicating where it should go. A subsequent scribe read doughty in (doughty be): this reading was passed on to Sir Lambewell. A more careful scribe realized the line was nonsense and replaced doughty by sothly, creating the Landeval reading. Sir Launfal may have the correct form because the branch it belongs to did not have this mistake, or because a particularly astute scribe corrected it back into the original reading. Hale and Furnivall’s edition of Sir Lambewell has few emendations. Contractions are resolved and the letters added are printed in italics (e.g., common words like that, your, quoth, king, and knight, and nasal consonants like the second m of lemman). Where the manuscript is illegible, the missing words are reconstructed and the emendation placed between square brackets in the text, e.g., l. 19 [soe largelye] his good he spent, an emendation suggested by Percy. The editors sometimes also emend when the manuscript is legible but the reading makes no sense. Line 138 reads I put my, lady, into your grace. Percy suggests me for my, and Furnivall prints the emendation in the text. Other corrections are suggested in notes. Line 475 reads & when thé came it Lamwell by. Percy (in a note) emends it Lamwell to Sir Lambwell. Lines 47–48 read Certes you shall me neue[r] see; / ffarwell, I take my leaue of you. Percy suggests reading of yee, rhyming with see. Some of these suggestions are so obvious that they had better have been integrated into the text, like drunken for druken (l. 171, possibly just the loss of the abbreviation for a nasal), madam for madadam (l. 263), or the knights for they knights (l. 315). Many other errors affecting the sense are allowed to stand, as when Lambewell “bends” his head and his body in his despair at having lost his mistress: he bent his body & his head eke (Sir Lambewell, l. 361)

The correct reading is of course bet, as found in Sir Launfal: He bet hys body and hys hedde ek (Sir Launfal, l. 751)

Editing a text with a history of transmission spanning several centuries raises problems of editorial policy. Most editors have no scruples about correcting obvious errors, but where should one draw the line? Should one do away with phonetic spellings (e.g., is for his, l. 341), which can

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give interesting indications as to language change? Should one keep or remove such alterations as more for moe (cf. infra), which bear witness to linguistic change but spoil the rhyme? Should one remove lines obviously added in later stages of the transmission? Or, more generally, should one print a seventeenth- century version of the Lanval story, or the medieval original that lies behind it—very far behind? Apart from the fact that one cannot seriously contemplate reconstructing the original from one or even three versions, a seventeenth- century Lanval is interesting in its own right, and the additions and alterations to the text cannot all be considered corruptions. Some of the alterations to the original text are deliberate. The grammar of Sir Lambewell is not Middle English, nor is its vocabulary medieval. A process of modernization, no doubt spread over the whole period of transmission, has been at work. It has affected a number of grammatical features. The comparative of good was once bet.8 This form is used in Sir Launfal: To lede the daunce Launfal was set; For hys largesse he was lovede the bet, (Sir Launfal, ll. 643–44)

The word is modernized and the rhyme lost in both Sir Landeval and Sir Lambewell: Sir Landevale was to-fore i- sette; For his largesse he was louyd the better. (Sir Landeval, ll. 191–92) Sir Lambell he was before sett, for his large spending they loued him best; (Sir Lambewell, ll. 229–30)

The comparative moe < OE ma tends to be replaced by the modern form more. Sir Lambewell has nine more against two moe, both of which come at the end of a line (ll. 224 and 598) and rhyme with alsoe; of the nine more, two rhyme with thoe (ll. 391–92) and goe (ll. 413–14), which shows that the original version had moe there, too, as no doubt also in the seven cases where the word is not in final position. Modernization has been systematic except at the end of lines, where the reviser was faced with the dilemma of letting an archaic word stand or losing the rhyme. Among the changes in word endings is the plural of day (OE dæg, dagas > ME days, daws > Mod.E (day, days). Sir Launfal still has daws in the first line: Be doughty Artours dawes That held Engelond yn good lawes (Sir Launfal, ll. 1–2)

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While the rhyme is lost in the other two versions: Sothly by Arthurys day Was Bretayne yn grete nobyle, (Sir Landeval, ll. 1–2) Doughty in king Arthures dayes when Brittaine was holden in noblenesse, (Sir Lambewell, ll. 1–2)

The plural dawes was already archaic when Sir Launfal was written down, since all other occurrences in this poem are spelt day(e)s (six times, never at the end of a line). Though in Chestre’s time dawes was still understandable, a few generations later the Landeval and then the Lambewell revisers found it advisable to use the modern form, though this meant losing the rhyme. The plural ending changed between Middle English and Modern English (-en > zero). The older form is still found in Sir Landeval and could be used in a rhyme: So long that the knyghtes comyn And ther so they hym namyd9 (Sir Landeval, ll. 315–16)

With the loss of endings and the replacement of nim by take, the two lines could not rhyme in 1650. The Lambewell reviser rearranged the second line to make it end with a nasal as an approximate rhyme: soe long he lay that they Knights came, & in his chamber tooke him then, (Sir Lambewell, ll. 315–16)

In the process of transmission, words that have become archaic tend to be replaced by modern ones. The noun lease, “lying” or “falsehood,” as in the formula without les, disappeared from the English language at the end of the sixteenth century. It is present in both Launfal and Sir Landeval: To say the sothe, wythout les, All togedere how hyt was (Sir Launfal, ll. 784–85) The sothe to say and no leese Alle to gedir as it was. (Sir Landeval, ll. 290–91)

Sir Lambewell rewrites the line: the sooth to say in that case altogether as it was. (Sir Lambewell, ll. 331–32)

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Technical terms referring to medieval notions are replaced by nearhomonyms with a different meaning. The fairy lady has a purple cloth on her bed, called byse by Sir Landeval and Sir Launfal. This type of cloth was no longer in use in the seventeenth century, and Sir Lambewell has vice, probably to be understood as device, that is to say pattern.10 Compare: In the pavyloun he fond a bed of prys, Yheled wyth purpur bys (Sir Launfal, ll. 283–84) There was a bede of mekylle price, Coueride with purpille byse. (Sir Landeval, ll. 93–94) in that pauillion was a bed of price that was couered ore with goodlie vice (Sir Lambewell, ll. 115–116)

The text of the poem is also affected by changes in pronunciation. The loss of vowels in word endings has played havoc with the metrics. The original fourteenth-century translation was written in the equivalent of the French octosyllable, but the loss of final -e means that many lines are too short to scan properly. To remedy this, the Lambewell reviser added line fillers, and sometimes overdid it. In the examples below, Sir Landeval and Sir Launfal have short lines that have been lengthened in Sir Lambewell: Sojournede yn Kardeuyle (Sir Launfal, l. 8) He soiourned at Carlile (Sir Landeval, l.4) he sojourned in merry Carlile (Sir Lambewell, l. 4) yonge knyghtes and squyers (Sir Landeval, l. 11) both yonge knights & Squires eke (Sir Lambewell, l. 11) He gaf gyftys largelyche (Sir Launfal, l. 28) And yaf yeftes largely (Sir Landeval, l. 21) & he gaue gifts that were larglie (Sir Lambewell, l. 18)

Between the beginning of the fourteenth century, when the Lai de Lanval was first translated into Middle English, and the mid seventeenth century, when Sir Lambewell was written down, the English language underwent a drastic phonetic change known as the Great Vowel Shift. The spelling gives no clue to this, but the rhyme scheme occasionally does, since when the stress was moved forward on words borrowed from French, the last vowel was shortened and did not shift. Compare Sir Lambewell, where the rhyme has been lost: & one of them had a gold Bason, & the other a towell of silke fine. (Sir Lambewell, ll. 72–73)

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And the earlier Sir Launfal and Sir Landeval, which retain it: That oon bar of gold a basyn; That other a towayle whyt and fyn (Sir Launfal, ll. 244–45) That one bare a golde basyne, That othir a towail riche and fyne. (Siur Landeval, ll. 63–64)

The loss of rhyme probably explains the singleton in Sir Lambewell, l. 74: & either of them had a ffresh color, (Sir Lambewell, l. 74)

While Sir Landeval reads: With facys white as lely f loure, With ruddy rede as rose coloure; (Sir Landeval, ll. 59–60)

Since flower and color no longer rhymed in seventeenth-century English, the link between the two lines was weakened, paving the way for the loss of the first one. Other alterations cover several lines, and even whole episodes in the case of Sir Launfal: the story itself was partially modified to suit the tastes of different audiences, so that a study of these alterations can give indications as to the fields of interest of the revisers and of their audiences.11 Sir Landeval is a relatively late version with a whole century of transmission behind it. Many of the additions it incorporates ref lect a materialistic outlook. Alone of the three versions, it hints that it is Arthur’s generosity in dealing out treasure that attracts knights to his court: There came men on euery syde, Yonge knyghtes and squyers And othir bolde b[a]chelers, Forto se that nobly That was with Arthur alle-wey; For ryche yeftys and tresoure He gayf to eache man of honoure. (Sir Landeval, ll. 10–16)

It adds lines (in italics below) to Landeval’s speech of despair at finding himself poor, all of which underline the social implications of the situation: Who hath no good, goode can he none; And I am here in vnchut12 londe, And no gode haue vnder honde. Men wille me hold for a wreche; (Sir Landeval, ll. 24–27)

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Money is equated with good behavior by the wordplay in the first line, while the last line implies that Arthur and his court can have no esteem for a penniless knight. Once rich again, the first thing Landeval buys are clothes befitting his rank: Hym sylf he clothyde ffulle richely, Hys squyer, hys yoman honestly. (Sir Landeval, ll. 169–70)

This materialistic outlook is shared by other characters, since the barons hesitate to condemn to death such a generous giver: Butt greatt vilany were ther-vpon To for- do suche a man, That is more large and fre Then eny of vs that here be. (Sir Landeval, ll. 338–41)

Sir Launfal’s specific additions13 take the work even further in the direction of materialism. Launfal, though still termed generous, does not exceed his income as long as he stays at the court, and only becomes poor when he has to live on his own. The passages referring to the hero’s generosity and to his ruin are separated by some hundred lines, which suppress any relationship between the two facts: He gaf gyftys largelyche (Sir Launfal 28) [Launfal is made a seneschal, is disliked by Guinevere, leaves the court and takes his lodgings with a former servant, now mayor.] So savegelych hys good he besette That he ward yn greet dette (Sir Launfal, ll. 130–31)

Compare with Sir Landeval and Sir Lambewell: Sir Landevale spent blythely And yaf yeftes largely; So wildely his goode he sette That he felle yn grete dette (Sir Landeval, ll. 20–23) and euer he spent worthilye, & he gaue gifts that were larglie; [soe largely] his good he spent, much more than euer he had rent, & soe outragiouslie he it sett that he became far in debt (Sir Lambewell, ll. 17–22)

Unlike Landeval and Lambewell, who encounter the fairy immediately after leaving Arthur’s court, Chestre’s hero actually experiences what it is to be penniless and ill-dressed in a world where clothes and money are

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a passport to social status.14 Of the three versions, Sir Launfal is the most realistic as concerns money matters. Comparison between Marie de France’s lai and the three versions taken together shows that the hero’s concern for money, though developed by both Sir Landeval and Sir Launfal, was already present in the (lost) fourteenth-century Middle English translation. In Marie’s Lai de Lanval, generosity is only one of the hero’s many qualities (Pur sa valu, pur sa largesce, / Pur sa bealté, pur sa pruesce, / L’envioent tuit li plusur, ll. 21–22),15 and is in no way excessive. Marie’s Lanval becomes poor because the king deliberately overlooks him when granting land to his knights, while the translator makes of his lavish spending the direct cause of his downfall. The word large is repeated as a leitmotiv in all three Middle English versions, with six occurrences in Sir Launfal (ll. 28, 31, 35, 624, 644, 647),16 seven in Sir Landeval (ll. 21, 129, 153, 179, 192, 322, 340), and six in Sir Lambewell (ll. 18, 159, 188, 230, 232, 367). The Middle English character, once he has become rich, does not use his money only to benefit prisoners and minstrels, but also to buy horses and entertain on a large scale. As other critics have noted about Sir Launfal,17 such additions indicate a middle-class audience of a mercantile turn of mind, very different from the aristocratic circles that Marie’s Anglo-Norman lays had been written for. While the two fifteenth- century versions further emphasize the materialistic dimension introduced by the translator, Sir Lambewell tones it down. Its reviser gives Lambewell other qualities besides generosity to win popularity among the knights of Arthur’s court: eche man for him was full woe, for a larger spender then hee neuer came in that countrye & thereto he was feirce & bold, none better in the Kings houshold. (Sir Lambewell, ll. 366–70)

Rather than on money, the Lambewell reviser lays the stress on interpersonal relations. He adds scraps of dialogue here and there and a number of details on the interactions of characters, thereby evincing an interest for psychology less medieval than modern. Lambewell is keenly aware of the social distance that separates him from his fairy mistress. On first finding himself in her presence, he kneels (ll. 133–4), and when she offers him her love, he warns her that he is too poor to support her in the manner to which she is accustomed (as though a fairy expected a mortal to pay her bills!): I am a knight without hawere;18 I haue noe goods noe more, nor men, to maintaine this estate I find your in. (Sir Lambewell, ll. 150–52)

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The sum involved, though high, is more realistic than in the other versions, since a single pomell of the pavillon is worth one hundred pounds in Sir Lambewell (ll. 103–104), but has the value of a citie or a towne in Sir Landeval (ll. 79–80). When it is time for bed, Lambewell hesitates to lie down beside the lady, although she has explicitly expressed the wish to have him as her lover and he has acquiesced: Sir Lambwell, like a hailow Knight, by her bedside stood vp full right, said, “you displease, that wold I nought, but Iesus leeue, you knew my thought.” then spake that Lady free, saies, “vndight thee, Lambewell, & come to me.” (Sir Lambewell, ll. 173–78)

This hesitation sounds rather absurd in the context of the medieval romance tradition. Lambewell repeats to the king that he is unworthy of his mistress and would not dare to touch her unless she explicitly allowed it: I am to simple to tuch her lappe or yett to come vnto her bower, eccept it were for her pleasure, not displeasing her sickerlie (Sir Lambewell, ll. 382–85)

When she comes to Arthur’s court to save him, he is so unsure of being forgiven that he asks the king and knights to intercede for him (ll. 591–98). Similarly, the maidens coming to Arthur’s court greet Lambewell as they pass by him (ll. 475–78), which is both socially right since he is their mistress’s lover and unthinkable in this context since the lady herself is angry with him and will not even look at him. In all of these instances Lambewell behaves not so much like a medieval hero as like a seventeenth-century gentleman transported into a romance setting to which he tries to apply the social norms of his time. The modern reader is reminded of Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s Court, though the gap between the two worlds is less wide and the reviser probably unaware of it. Both Lambewell’s delicacy in his dealings with the other sex, and the narrator’s delicacy in making his hero popular for qualities other than lavish spending, suggest the audience has changed once more. It has lost the materialistic outlook on life that characterized the two fifteenth-century versions and the original fourteenth-century translation. Its greater refinement is the mark of a higher social origin: the wheel has come full circle.

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Three main periods in the transmission of the story and three types of audiences can be distinguished, from the Anglo-Norman aristocracy through the Middle English middle class to the more refined readers of the seventeenth century. The corresponding changes of outlook have been achieved through additions rather than suppressions, even when, as in the case of the Lambewell reviser with money matters or Chestre with generosity as a source of poverty, the writer was obviously uncomfortable with the details he inherited from his predecessors. As a result, the finished work incorporates accretions from various periods, added by various revisers and ref lecting the tastes of various audiences, all coexisting as in a palimpsest. It is a fascinating task to identify layers of accretion corresponding to the different social contexts. It is also an indispensable task if one is to assess a late version on its own merits rather than on the tradition that lies behind it. Notes 1. Alan J. Bliss, ed., Sir Launfal (London: Nelson, 1960), p. 15. 2. See J. Burke Severs and Albert E. Hartung, eds. A Manual of the Writings in Middle English, 1050–1500, vol. 1 (New Haven: Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1967); for criticism of this practice, see Bliss, ed., Sir Launfal, pp. 4–5. I maintain this distinction for convenience. 3. See George Lyman Kittredge, “Launfal,” American Journal of Philology 10 (1889): 1–33. 4. For a discussion of this with reference to the Lanval poems, see Colette Stévanovitch, “Le(s) lai(s) de Lanval, Launfal, Landeval, Lambewell . . . . et la notion d’œuvre dans la littérature moyen- anglaise,” in Left Out: Texts and Ur-Texts, ed. Nathalie Collé-Bak, Monica Latham, and David Ten Eyck (Nancy: Presses Universitaires de Nancy, 2009). 5. S.T. Knight, “The Oral Transmission of Sir Launfal,” Medium Ævum 38 (1969): 164–70. 6. Texts are quoted from the Chadwick-Healey LION (Literature Online) database. Reference is also made to paper editions, viz. for Sir Launfal and Sir Landeval: Bliss, ed., Sir Launfal; for Sir Lambewell: John W. Hales and Frederick J. Furnivall, eds. Bishop Percy’s Folio Manuscript, Ballads and Romances, vol. 1 (London: N. Trübner & Co, 1868), pp. 142–64. I would like to thank Claire Vial for providing me with access to this edition. 7. Hales and Furnivall, eds. Sir Lambewell, p. 144. 8. As in Piers Plowman’s Dowell, Dobet, and Dobest. 9. Obviously a mistake for namyn, corrected by Bliss. 10. As suggested by Percy in a note. Possibly a misreading of v for b (I thank Jane Roberts for this suggestion). 11. When lines are present only in one version it is assumed that they were added in the course of the history of that textual branch rather than

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12. 13. 14.

15. 16.

17. 18.

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suppressed from the other two. When a passage is common to all three branches it is assumed to have been part of the fourteenth- century translation, though it could also have been added by one of the first revisers before the various textual branches separated. For “uncuth.” I shall leave aside here the episodes borrowed from sources other than the Lanval story. Between leaving Arthur’s court and meeting with the fairy Launfal lives in poverty, staying with a former servant whose f luctuating attitude to him mirrors the state of the hero’s fortunes. His two companions leave him when their clothes fall to pieces. Launfal himself has to miss church because of the state of his clothes. See A.C. Spearing, “Marie de France and Her Middle English Adapters,” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 12 (1990): 117–56, and Bliss, ed., Sir Launfal. Marie de France, Le lai de Lanval, ed. Jean Rychner and Paul Aebischer (Genève: Droz and Paris: Minard, 1958). For a different interpretation of this word (with sexual innuendo), see Carol J. Nappholz, “Launfal’s ‘Largesse’: Word-Play in Thomas Chestre’s ‘Sir Launfal,’ ” English Language Notes 25 (1988): 4–9. See in particular Bliss, ed., Sir Launfal, p. 42. Possibly for French avoir, “possessions” (Furnivall).

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CHAPTER 11 ELUCIDATIONS: BRINGING TO LIGHT THE AESTHETIC UNDERWRITING OF THE MATIÈRE DE BRETAGNE IN JOHN BOORMAN’S EXCALIBUR Jean-Marc Elsholz

Boorman’s film Excalibur enacts medieval theories of light that form the underwriting of successive layers of the Arthurian romance tradition. Introduction1 John Boorman’s Excalibur,2 a cinematographic “rewriting” of Arthurian legend, springs from the seeds that lie within medieval romance, for, as André Crépin observes, “light radiates at the heart the Middle Ages.”3 Film, a medium that depends on light to express the physical world, is particularly suited to the enactment of medieval theories of light. Many medieval philosophers held that all bodies consist of light, but that the formal appearance of this light varies in accordance with the being’s level of perfection. Boorman demonstrates how metal, which abounds in stories of the Grail quest, is a privileged vector for the expression of this aesthetic philosophy. Depictions of the merveilleux, a perfected form of the natural world embodied in medieval romance, are crafted with a vocabulary of luminosity. It is by transposing this vocabulary onto film through the appearance of metal that Excalibur exemplifies medieval theories of light that underlie and illuminate the literary palimpsest that is Arthurian romance. The Theory of Light: A Medieval Formal Cosmography “Couldn’t light, too, be matter? A kind of matter more fluid than fluids, inconsistent matter, but still visible matter? For a very long time, painters

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hadn’t thought of that.”4 If, in the course of his exposé, art historian René Huyghe dates this fascinating question to the age of Impressionism, the following extracts from the works of the thirteenth-century ecclesiastic Robert Grosseteste indicate that people had given it some thought long before then. Light is a very subtle corporal substance.5 Every creature is created on the basis of universal matter which informs the universal form of corporeity [i.e., light].6 All bodies are not of the same form (species) even through they all proceed from light . . . The form and perfection of all bodies is light, but in the higher bodies it is more spiritual and simple, whereas in the lower bodies it is more corporeal and multiplied (from On light (De luce) or the Beginning of Forms).7

Examination of the relationship between Boorman’s film and a philosophy that is highly speculative at the formal level will enable us to grasp some of the operations and problematics of one and the other reciprocally. To analyze Excalibur from the viewpoint of the theology of light perceptible at the heart of the Arthurian cycle helps us to understand how cinematography and formal thought envision Arthurian “en-lightening” anew, on bases that had not escaped the genius of filmmaker Abel Gance. “I was astounded,” he wrote, “to discover that my theory of living light had been expounded by Robert Grosseteste (1175–1253).”8 Robert Grosseteste was a spokesman of the “theology of light” movement at the origin of the inventive, erudite, and many- splendored conceptualization of light, which nourished Gothic art from the period in which Chrétien de Troyes composed his Arthurian romances (the school of Chartres) to that in which Wolfram von Eschenbach wrote Parzival (the Oxford School, with which Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, was associated).9 Without dwelling on Huygue’s discussion and its specific context, if one were to speculate about why the thirteenth- century thinking referred to above has been overlooked, one would certainly find at the forefront a certain reticence concerning the notion of “form” inherited from Plotinus (c.204–270), a major philosopher of the ancient world who is widely considered the founder of Neoplatonism.10 The theology of light is founded on an adaptation of Neoplatonism inspired most particularly by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite:11 light is identified with Plotinian form, also called corporeity. The reciprocal conversion of light into substance is a formal operation that is difficult to grasp because it differs so radically from contemporary epistemology.12

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As St. Bonaventure puts it, light is the fundamental form of body, the first determination that provides the body with its manner of being.13 By assimilating light with substance, the theology of light opens up Neoplatonic form to medieval varieties of experimentation: scientific (Grosseteste studied optics and put forward a law of refraction) but also artistic, through the celebration of light, for instance in the writings of Abbot Suger (c.1081–1151).14 The distinction between science and art was, at any rate, hardly relevant in a culture that celebrated “beauty as the splendor of truth,” to borrow the famous Thomist expression, which is valid only in its full, formal sense as it was understood at the time, and not just as an anachronistic “metaphor of brilliance.”15 According to Edgar De Bruyne, scholars of the thirteenth century went beyond admiring light and celebrating it in grandiose images. They demonstrated with the science of their time that light is, in fact, the source of all beauty because it is constitutive of “the very essence of things.” Their entire vision of the world was infused with aesthetics; the theory of light had been transformed into a general model of the universe.16 Because De Bruyne’s work, saluted and cited by Umberto Eco,17 relies on medieval texts to define issues with respect to art (as do studies by Erwin Panofsky and, later, Georges Duby), by reading those texts back the other way through to the artistic production,18 we can restore in concreto the “Neoplatonistic” medieval universe. This, however, is admissible only insofar as medieval formal thought, which conceives of the world as representation in the Foucauldian sense, is essentially aesthetic in nature: the “visible Great Wholeness” is constructed as an admirable work of art.19 One discernible motive underlying De Bruyne’s work is his desire to rehabilitate certain kinds of medieval art that have been neglected inasmuch as people have tried to reduce all the aesthetic delights of medieval man to effects of “gold and glitter.” It was actually, he stresses, a love of light.20 It is revealing that some film criticism has drawn upon medieval aesthetics, implicitly reformulated as “meaning above all else,” only to backtrack and denigrate Excalibur’s form as “meaningless,” as the nickname “Kitsch Grail” 21 and the pejorative turn given to the association of the film with the work of Gustav Klimt indicate. If it is true that the film is “shiny,” one would do well to wonder whether the director’s taste for gleam was pointless, or rather a renewal of ancient thought transmitted by an artistic heritage sensitively received. Boorman’s invention of the figurative may be considered a re- creation of perceived form inherited from Arthurian texts of the Gothic age and their ongoing reception. 22

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A Coherent Aesthetic Metaphysics A Formal Force The aesthetic signification of physical appearance, more specifically of physiognomy as represented in medieval treatises, held great interest for people of the Middle Ages, as the many translations from Latin or Arabic attest. Such treatises sought to interpret character and temperament from the shape of parts of the body, the color of the complexion or hair, and human resemblance to various animals.23 This formal logic operates in Excalibur as well. It is noteworthy that . . . the armor worn during the period before Arthur and the earlier part of his reign . . . is dark and dull . . . Soon after Lancelot arrives . . . the Round Table knights adopt armor similar to Lancelot’s style of glossy, chrome-like platemail . . . With the rebellion of Mordred, knights in the varied, dark armor return . . . The final battle between Arthur and Mordred’s forces highlights the contrast between the silver and dark armor.24

Numerous trials are undergone as the men, constantly in armor, accede to the law of “metallognomy” operating in the cinematographic world of Excalibur. The dark, bestial armor of Uther’s clan, and later, at Mordred’s camp, is formidable, but it cannot overcome the gleaming, angelic armor from Camelot. Of this, the duel pitting Arthur against the unknown knight (Lancelot) is a perfect example. The blows are violent, signified by the clang of metal and the high temper of Arthur, weighed down in his robust cuirass. But it is the anonymous Lancelot, simple and bright, incomparably quicker, shining in his winged armor, who dominates the fight, only to be defeated by the brighter blaze: the f lash from the luminous, enigmatic Excalibur in response to the prone king’s command: Arthur: “Excalibur, I call on your power!” [from the screenplay]25

Since “in its pure state the luminous force is the fundamental and substantial energy of corporeity,”26 it reigns supreme over the outcome of combat, which, while aesthetic, is nonetheless “energetic, corporeal, substantial.” Indeed, a knight possesses the qualities of his armor as an embodiment of light and its properties, both in Boorman’s film and in medieval romance: “The superb hero wore bright, luminous iron armor”; “Not once has his valiant heart betrayed our hero, tempered like steel”; “he looked like an angel hatched on earth.”27 And, at the other end of the spectrum, the equation between darkness, metal, and ugliness: “[N]ever had there been a creature so hideous even on the edge of hell. You would never have seen iron as black as her neck and hands.”28

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Spiritual Immanence Merlin: “Remember, Arthur, there’s always something cleverer than yourself!”

This warning by Merlin—bested and toppled into the stream by a small, shiny fish in an immediate foreshadowing of the outcome of the duel between Arthur and Lancelot in front of a waterfall—is noticeable for its incongruity. Like the fish, if Lancelot is quick and bright, it is because of his agility beneath his “metal skin”29 rather than for his mental acumen. It is a question here of another kind of “cleverness,” determined by a generalized aesthetic order. De Bruyne notes the operation of a “coherent metaphysics”30 in medieval art and literature, as we do in Boorman’s film via the mediation of metal. Formal immanence registers thought as an aesthetic value, and in so doing it inverts all the usual orders and hierarchies ordinarily imposed by transcendence. A dynamic of reversal orchestrates each fight in the episode: the king and all his men are knocked down by the luminous Lancelot. The scene, having begun with a quicksilver fish besting the brightest mind, closes with the sword Excalibur, which, with its f lash, overcomes the best of knights. Nevertheless, “to join together light and iron does not mean to wield the sword: the sword motif is not martial but spiritual . . . Weapons of battle [are transformed into] ‘arms of light.’ ”31 This is the lesson that Merlin is getting at by proclaiming Lancelot brighter than Arthur as he pronounces the elusive little sparkling fish cleverer than himself. “Indifferent matter,” when sublimated into light, is necessarily more intelligent because, in accordance with Grosseteste’s remarkably commutative definition, light is “spiritual body or bodily spirit.”32 Merlin, describing the fish as the camera cuts to Lancelot in all his brightness: “Look at him, so beautiful, so quick!”

“Quick” qualifies not only the movements of the fish and Lancelot, but corresponds to mental brightness, the “cleverness” to which Merlin alludes. The corresponding medieval view is explained by the philosopher Paul Vignaux: “[W]ithout the body to weigh it down, our souls, like angels, could receive full knowledge through the irradiation of spiritual light precisely at the highest part of the soul, which Robert Grosseteste calls intelligence.” The theology of light enables “vision of this kind to apply to the whole universe and to each of its parts, to movement, to action on matter and on the very senses.”33 Of this there subsist many traces in language: the headdress of Merlin the mastermind is an unusual metallic skullcap that reflects continuously. Sometimes the identification of light

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with intelligence is more or less lost, as in elucidation, the title word of this essay, which alludes to a strange Arthurian text, The Elucidation, and is an homage to Rimbaud’s Illuminations, which perfectly render this kind of “vision.”34 An Experimental and Ascendant Metaphysics “The blind spirit surges toward truth through what is material and, seeing the light, it revives from its former submersion.” So reads Abbot Suger’s dedication inscribed on a portal of the cathedral of Saint-Denis.35 The eminent Panofsky considers Suger’s work similar to “the modern film director’s art of mise en scène,”36 effectively establishing the cathedral as a visual installation. Its stained-glass windows are optical devices that filter perceptible light to make it intelligible.37 They “establish the space of sanctuary in the glimmer of gold and transport the soul in wonder,”38 thereby translating the physical experience of beauty into metaphysical meaning. Camelot, a Gothic castle of gold and silver whose light dazzles Perceval, performs this function in Boorman’s film. Moreover, it is through a stained-glass window in its chapel that the lightning bolt strikes the royal armor at the heart and plunges the knights into the Grail quest. Spiritual sensitivity to light is present at all stages of life. Thomas Aquinas cites three types of pleasure which may result from the perception of a form. . . . The enjoyment associated with the exercise of real appetites, . . . aesthetic joy, . . . the aesthetic-biological pleasure which we call sexual beauty . . . where man, both animal and spiritual, delights in harmonious forms but in accordance with carnal possession.39

Taste or appetite is formal, and its degree of elevation is declared as such in the film: thus when Merlin the magus—who never sits down at banquets and has trouble eating one of Guinevere’s cakes at the festivities in Cornwall—goes fishing in a dark body of water, it is not for food but to nourish his soul with the fish’s quick, bright “cleverness.” “May we not rightly assume that even in the aesthetic pleasure of perceptible things, an ecstatic element can occur which vibrates at the very tip of the soul?” muses Thomas of Saint Victor (c.1190–1246).40 Carnal desire overwhelms Uther at the sight of Ygerne loosening her hair from its metal ring and agitating it energetically during her dance. He is as sensitive to its shine as some medieval poets, whose gaze was “riveted by luminous blond locks of silken curls, glimmering like gold, more beautiful awry than when expertly arranged with combs.”41 Arthur is conceived—wrought, so to

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speak—by the combined “work” of the male armored body and female naked f lesh glowing in the heat of the furnace of the giant fireplace. Metallic brilliance is the last wish of the dying Uther as he plunges the glistening metal of Excalibur into the ore stone. It is a first motive of the son who will extract it, in the serendipitous shot where the baby Arthur firmly grasps and fixes his gaze on his mother’s shiny golden locks as he is torn from her arms. Nevertheless, the hierarchy does not depend on immediately perceptible appearance, but rather on its intelligible formal perfection, which may be latent. “Earth is all the higher bodies because all the higher lights come together in it.”42 Thus, even if the most opaque being is the earth element, it contains the energy and the beauty of light because from it are extracted shining metals.43 Metals drawn from the corruptible earth and rectified by the natural light of human intelligence reveal superior light. Indeed, metal is the most subtly balanced body in the film; it is, in Gothic art, the privileged way of expressing how “luminous energy constitutes the preexisting corporeity in any physical being.”44 To exercise mastery over light through metal is to master the very form of the world and, therefore, the world through its form. Richard of Saint Victor construes this in metaphysical terms: When they have melted their metals and prepared their molds, smelters pour any figure as they wish and produce any vase of the right size and desired shape. The soul, having reached the same stage, bends easily to every sign of [superior] will, it even lends itself, by spontaneous desire, to . . . the exact form desired of it.45

This is what Merlin teaches Arthur about knighthood’s greatest qualities: “They blend like the metals we mix to make a good sword.” In film, the figurative birth of a person or of humankind, that is, their first appearance on the screen, is often invested with ontological value. Like Nature in Jean de Meun’s Romance of the Rose (c.1269–78), who “hammers and forges ceaselessly, replacing the old generation with the new,”46 in Excalibur Merlin watches human figures born of hammering in the fires of combat, to the din of the forge. Like earth, the human clump is heavy, tangled, and corrupt, moving with effort, but it contains the light of metal, extractable by fire, as well as reason, which can detect the light and bring it out. Thus to cultivate metal is—in formal terms—a civilizing act. In this respect, Merlin’s lesson to Uther, “I gave you Excalibur to heal, not to hack,” is no longer paradoxical. The sword fascinates and, through its spiritual inf luence, does civilizing work. Thus peace is sealed between the duke and Uther upon the latter’s solemn

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exhibition of Excalibur, bright “lyke 30 torchys,”47 staged by Boorman to accentuate its light by subtle movements of the actor’s wrist. Merlin to Uther: “Show the sword.” . . . “Behold, the sword of power.”

It is according to its law that Arthur governs, through his ability to make the sword’s shining metal emerge from the stone. As one metaphysician notes, “The gift of the king’s sword is the gift of light.”48 “It is because of Good and Beauty that emerge, among beings endowed with reason, all forms of intellectual concord (since concord is born of the agreement of minds about the same principle). . . .”49 Explaining these words of Thomas Aquinas, De Bruyne continues by observing that true beauty makes people unanimous in admiration. It unites them like brothers in reciprocal sympathy out of a common love of the ideal and brings them together in cohesion with a view to action, that is, with a view to great common works. This is the social effect that beauty has on minds. Everywhere these effects are seen, one may be certain that something beautiful is actively present.50 “You Must Become Visionary”51 Perceval to Lancelot: “Take me with you! I want to be a knight!”

The irrepressible enthusiasm for the beauty of brilliance that motivates a young man to join the society of men, “whatever the cost,”52 is the theme of the encounter between Perceval and the knights, and lies at the base of the Perceval legend as we know it. Chrétien de Troyes’s Perceval “sees very frankly” because of the luster of their armor that the knights are a “company of angels.” “Joy lends him an impossibly clownish and wildeyed expression,” and he “talks with the men about their other life.” Of course the knights make fun of him, but Perceval knows he sees rightly when he considers that “this man does not know what he does; he is an angel.” He perceives naturally what the scholarly cleric Alain de Lille was proclaiming at the time Chrétien de Troyes was composing his Perceval ou le Conte du Graal: knights are the earthly version of spiritual angels. Thus Chrétien may treat as a simpleton the young fool who, in his pursuit of the “golden spark,” mistakes the maiden’s vermeil53 and gold tent for a church, for the author is tracing the aptitude and the path that will guide the young bumpkin from the shadow of the forest to the light-saturated Grail. Boorman introduces Perceval the same way. Lancelot is amused at the young man’s forthright, naive fascination for his winged, shining armor. It is this gift for seeing clearly that, from glimmer to glimmer, will lead

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him to the dazzling metallic Grail castle. His similarity to Chrétien de Troyes’s Perceval leads us to consider the nature of the beauty that unites men and to explore the forms Boorman uses in a single question: where does this fascination for light come from? Perceval’s Naive Questions: Some Erudite Answers Cristina Noacco analyzes the meaning of light in depictions by Chrétien de Troyes, and, noting the many occurrences of the word angel in Perceval’s discourse when he encounters the knights in shining armor, affirms that “the value assigned to light . . . testifies to Chrétien’s sources, from the closest, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, to Platonic doctrine through the mediation of Plotinus.”54 Augustine of Hippo, stating that “with these more estimable [Plotinian] philosophers we have no dispute in the matter,” notes that “they perceived . . . that these [angels] have the same source of happiness as ourselves: a certain intelligible light, which . . . illumines them that they may be penetrated with light and enjoy perfect happiness. . . .”55 An angel knows itself per suam formam: it is itself its own intelligible form because its natural being and its intelligible being are one. . . . The angel’s selfknowledge is an instantaneous and immediate vision of self [which], at the created level, renders the ideal of knowledge as a vision of the essence.56

Man, on the other hand, suffers from separateness; his natural being is not in phase with his intelligible being. The questions of Chrétien’s Perceval bespeak the distance that separates the human condition from the angelic, and how knighthood is the intermediate form apt to bridge the gap. Perceval exclaims to himself, “Those are angels I see!” and to the knights, “If only I could be like you, so bright and magnificent . . . Were you born like that?” and when, mocking him, they deny it, “Tell me of the King who makes knights, and where he can usually be found.”57 It is in the knight’s angelic luminosity that Perceval identifies his desire for ontological identification. He instinctively feels that this “mediating representation” will allow him to face, in “successive steps,” the bridging of the “spatial distance and temporal succession that stands in the way of the perfect coinciding” of his two natures.58 One must turn to Boorman to observe how, by living out his knighthood, by coming closer to angels through the brilliance of light, man approaches his essential form. It is Perceval who, “following an itinerary of senefiance,”59 will see the quest through to its end. He will move from “physical light to metaphysical light,” from the visible world to the intelligible world, to find ontological form: human beauty that is capable of founding a just human society.

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The Grail’s Château Merveilleux: The Film’s Inscription within a Topos The most famous Grail castles (those described by Chrétien de Troyes and Malory, for instance) conform to the paradigm of the château merveilleux or “wondrous castle”; the Grail castle in Excalibur is no exception. The term merveille derives from the Latin mirari, which, according to Jacques Le Goff, means “open your eyes wide.”60 “The merveilleux forms a system with the miraculous and the magical.”61 At the Grail castle, action is reduced to the bare minimum; it remains only to contemplate the miraculous fulfillment of the quest. Crossing its threshold, we enter the aesthetic world purified by the gaze whose end is vision. Metallic Brilliance: The Pristine Form of the World Christine Ferlampin-Acher analyzes the characteristics of the château merveilleux with respect to the episode of the Golden Island in Le Bel Inconnu, an Arthurian romance from the late twelfth or early thirteenth century.62 Its wondrous otherness is a “hyperbolic development of the ‘real.’ ” By “real,” Ferlampin-Acher means all “realistic, solid, picturesque elements” that compose ordinary depictions within the narrative. Boorman’s Grail castle confirms the ideal outcome of an aesthetic process of “movement toward the merveilleux,” which was underway since the start of the film: the Grail castle is the fulfillment—in intelligible light—of Camelot, whose interior architecture it reiterates. Camelot, blazing with gold and silver, already outshined the metalliferous Tintagel, whose rocky, silver-veined tones gave it the appearance of a working mine, the stones extracted from it hurled from its heights upon the assailants attacking its walls. The Grail castle rationalizes, trims, cuts to the essential with a “quantitative amplification”: the brilliance of its solid walls, bare and smooth, materializes as a gleam. Yet it also effects a “qualitative amplification”: if Excalibur is intriguing because of its excessive shine from an imprecise light source, the Grail castle qualifies true light because this light proceeds from pure metal. “The amplification announces from the start that a new dimension has come into play.” The château merveilleux “dissolves into an abstraction, that of the perfection of the ideal.”63 The Grail castle’s location is intelligible. This Plotinian “therebeyond” is reached here and now, not by journeying to a place, but rather through a unique combination of destiny and ability, adventure and spiritual state. In Excalibur these criteria are embodied in the unachieved quest, the despairing hero (Perceval: “I failed”), the edge of the wasteland, and the approach of death, when one can draw no nearer to “the mystical aestheticism of beyond”64 without becoming part of it. In the Grail

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castle, we thus cross over “from physical light to metaphysical light”65 through a thematics of medieval vision so concentrated that the dazzled Perceval feasibly could have uttered the final verses of the illuminated Dante: On th’ everlasting splendour, that I look’d, ... I therein, methought, in its own hue Beheld our image painted . . . 66

Man’s Intelligible Form An “itinerary of senefiance,”67 the Grail quest exposes Perceval’s f lesh, stripped of its armor in drowning, to the king’s “other body” or “character angelicus.”68 An immanent proto-anthropos, Arthur, whose features are invisible yet recognizable, is enveloped in full winged armor, showing how every armed knight is a “mediating representation,” his very brightness elevating natural man to intelligible dignity. Opposite him, the nude, shining body of the individuated, artfully wounded Perceval is universalized through saturation of metaphysical light. St. Bonaventure, for one, would have fully understood the image as the completion and fulfillment of man’s latent perfection. In his view, when light—which possesses clarity, impassibility, mobility, universal penetration—completely dominates the other elements with such a superabundance of energy that it predisposes matter to immortal life, the body is entirely irradiated by the vital principle which itself is completely subjugated to the intellect and illuminated . . . and becomes . . . as brilliant and impassible as pure light. In this body . . . even scars, which now sometimes enhance the expressive beauty . . . of a courageous man, accentuate the body’s gracefulness . . . .69

In the luminous Perceval, then, the merveille is fulfilled: the full cohesion of the “natural being” of flesh with its “intelligible form,” radiance. Boorman’s resolution of the Grail quest through the illuminated human form fully coincides with medieval thinking about the nature of man and of light. One can admire Boorman’s fervor and science in the cohesion of his scene with medieval sensibility. Indeed, through the aesthetic narrative of the matière de Bretagne, his film operates at a level to which his predecessor, Abel Gance, aspired: “Light is the sole element which moves from one world to another . . . Someday, thanks to [cinema], Light will be considered the only real character in any performance, the creator and transformer of all destinies.”70 And Formal Soul of Arthurian Society and the Natural World Boorman restores something of a collective enthusiasm for the luminosity of the armored knight, an ideal beauty connecting man to the world

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through the aesthetics of metal. Retrieved from the invariable metaphysical world, testifying to the luminous continuity that unifies and legitimizes the Arthurian court, the shining Grail cup visibly revivifies Arthur, whose luster returns. Revitalization in terms of metal and light is, of course, exemplified in medieval romance: “Parzival . . . washed the marks of rust from his face, and everyone admired not only the redness (cf. vermeil) of his lips, but his bright complexion as well.”71 By resuscitating, from beyond, the intelligibility of the form of the knight, Perceval in Boorman’s film reawakens the Arthurian light buried in the winter of the wasteland. If cyclomorphic temporality had naturally turned Camelot’s gleam into the substantial rusting of the king and his despairing knights, the carefully orchestrated “springtime ride” 72 through the orchard (the stream of shining armor, farther off, combining with the luminous loop of a river), shows in the rain of petals that the radiance (vermeil) of the knights is as a sun irrigating the cycle of life. Arthur: “Because it will not be forgotten, that fair time may come again. Now once more I must ride with my knights.”

Through its re-advent, Arthurian knighthood triumphs formally and “seasonally”—therefore, eternally—over time. It was the time when the trees were in bloom, . . . and the meadows were grassy green; when the birds twittered sweet songs . . . and all things were ardent with joy . . . . When at last [Perceval] saw [the knights] coming out of the woods, when he saw their sparkling mail and their bright shining helmets, their spears and shields, things he had never seen before; when he saw the white and red [vermeil] gleaming in the sunlight, and the gold, blue and silver; he found it so beautiful and noble.73

Such imagery as this, from Chrétien de Troyes’s Conte du Graal, is the medieval underwriting made visible through the cinematic art of the scene from Excalibur. Literary “Photogenics” The opening title image of Excalibur is cinematographically illuminated. Through the use of gold, manuscript illuminations also can go some way to materializing “the very essence of things.” The only other way manuscripts could convey ideas was textually, through words, some of which gained special significance with respect to the aesthetics of medieval romance. “There is a color which leaves its mark on the long, adventurous

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route of Arthurian knights. Study of the texts [proves] that this color is, most of all, light. Such is the meaning of vermeil.” 74 Paul- Georges Sansonetti is referring to the remarkable versatility of the term, which, in the Middle Ages, broke away from its etymological sense (“vermilion”) to come to characterize “ref lections of gold combined with the metallic shine of the warrior.” 75 Enactments of this abound in Boorman’s film: the armored knights assembled at Arthur’s wedding, the bright blood from Lancelot’s wound on his armor, or Guinevere’s complexion under her metallic veil, as if “Nature had illuminated her with a color vermeil and pure.” 76 If rhyme assimilates it with the sun (soleil),77 that brightest of lights and, through this analogy, with gold, “the noblest of metals,” the quality of vermeil does not stop there. It “rises beyond, to another light. It mixes for a moment with the physical phenomenon before taking on a metaphysical sense.” 78 It has been remarked that “the Grail problem is inextricably linked to the word vermeil.” 79 In the quest, Michel Zink emphasizes, the journey is a metaphor.80 Vermeil converts the adventure into a substantial process. Sparkling intermittently, at the notable stages it marks along the way, vermeil achieves its ultimate expression in the Grail castle. The repetition and redundancy of the word in romance works toward the fulfillment of its anagrammatic resonance with merveille.81 One of its effects is the conversion of f lesh into light,82 which takes center stage in the presence of the Grail. The Grail reveals the true nature, beautiful and luminous, of corporeity. In Malory’s words, “Than began every knyght to beholde other, and eyther saw other, by their semyng, fayrer than ever they were before. . . . Than entird into the halle the Holy Grayle,” while the most sacred of faces, that of the celestial child descending for the celebration, is “as red and as bryght os ony fyre.”83 Sansonetti concludes that the radiance of Galahad’s armor is the incandescence of vermeil that fulfills the luminous identification of the natural body with the intelligible body just as we see in the film, in Boorman’s staging of Perceval’s gleaming f lesh. As the ecumenical philosopher Henry Corbin explains, there is a correlation between a being’s divine dimension, the notion of “destiny,” and the “Light of Glory,” a power that constitutes and conjoins the being with a being of light.84 Vermeil would be the privileged space of this luminous revelation. In De Bruyne’s analysis, “what we admire in the white and vermeil body without realizing it is the light which constitutes corporeity, and which gradually breaks down into indefinite shades.”85 Thus the indeterminate shine of vermeil is the subtle basis at work within every color. Isidore of Seville, moreover, had already sensed that color itself, through which the world “shines and gleams,” has “something metallic about it.”86

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Aesthetic Metal This “something metallic” that constitutes the vermeil in Boorman’s film is a metal whose purely formal definition is independent of physical composition. It can take the shape of the blond hair of Ygerne and Morgana (a sustained reminder of a medieval topos), or be perceived in the mercurial water with which the Lady of the Lake merges through the opportune invention of a “chain mail” garment over the white samite gown depicted by Malory. Formal logic is stronger than the thread(s) of the plot; even the use of weapons is subordinated to a constantly and consistently operating aesthetic semantics of universalized metal. It can be observed in the ductility of metal, for instance when the shape of Uther’s helmet metamophoses into that of the duke, or in the sound of metal, when Arthur’s hand in its metal gauntlet strikes the silvery megalith, resonating like a gong to wake Merlin. Metalworking at the forge is seen during the tournament scene, but metaphorical/metaphysical welding also occurs: “The spectator sees Merlin fully as a smith with a specialization in welding in the ‘creation of the Round Table’: a powerful f lame bursts from his staff to weld the knights together . . . into heralds of a beneficent civilization.” 87 Electromagnetism, too, is at work: the armor of Lancelot and Arthur attracts lightning. When optics comes into play, formal metal is sculpted by light. In a commentary of his work, Boorman says he resorted to conventional dioptric effects to “build” Camelot, the impossible castle of gold and silver, in the heart of the forest.88 The speedy initiation of Perceval, making his dumbstruck way through the arts and sciences that animate the court of Camelot, ends with a big magnifying glass, hinting that the parchment rolls Merlin is mulling over are the plans of a magical- optical castle.89 Lastly, metallic alchemy: Merlin: “What is the stone that burns?” Morgan: “Mercury, to solve with sulfur.”

Alchemy, invoked by Merlin, is visible at court, between astrology and magic (where the dove transforms into a spark), a reminder that hermeticism is without doubt the most considerable aesthetic objectification of metaphysical questions.90 In all of these ways and others, nothing in Excalibur escapes vermeil; once its shine is established as the logos of representation, meaning tends to convert “intelligible properties” into its light, as Pseudo-Dionysius explains in his De Caelesti Hierachia, taken up later by John Scotus Eriugena

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at the very beginning of his own commentary: Our spirit can rise to what is not material through the conduit of what is. . . . This is possible only because all things visible are “material lights” which ref lect “intelligible lights.” . . . Any visible or invisible creature is a light brought into existence . . . This rock or this piece of wood is a light for me . . . because I perceive that it is good and beautiful; that it exists according to its own rules of proportion . . . its specific gravity. As soon as I see such things and others like them in this stone, they become lights for me; that is to say, they illuminate me. I begin by wondering where the stone gets the properties it is invested with . . . and soon, guided by reason, I am led through all things to this cause of all things which confers upon them place and order, number, species and kind, goodness, beauty and essence as well as all other gifts and qualities.91

The World of Light When Excalibur appeared in movie theaters, a critic noted that “the technical resources at work in this vast epic are remarkable. John Boorman’s film is impeccable, and the images created by the cinematographer, Alex Thompson, are among the most beautiful ever seen in cinema.”92 Yet what elicits admiration from one critic eludes another. Despite rightly remarking that in the Middle Ages images were first and foremost meaningful, not just decorative, director Olivier Assayas misjudges the film’s splendid “gold and glitter” by trivializing it as “anything so long as it’s pretty.” Because even beyond the impression of “beauty” shared by the film’s admirers and detractors when the film was released, it is useful to note the alignment of Boorman’s vermeil cosmos with the Gothic universe, “a world like a gigantic gold jewel ‘adorned’ with innumerable decorative forms.”93 In the fourteenth-century poem Pearl, attributed to the anonymous writer of the Arthurian Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the narrator resorts to the “elevated ornatus style” frequent in stories involving the merveilleux 94 to tell the dream through which he arrives in heaven to find his lost child, his “pearl.” The commentary André Crépin devotes to this text is particularly relevant because it centers on a key element: “notations of light.”95 One observes how the author, composing sumptuous images with a masterly touch, uses art to bring the reader into a regimen of light, “to a vision where everything, for an instant, is illuminated.” Crépin examines the minute work of the poet who crafts his bejeweled world, “the erudite architecture of the poem,” and studies its versification, which curves the plot into “a finely crafted circle, the perfect image of the pearl invoked,” making “the work and the jewel . . . perfectly round [endeless rounde] (continuous, like Sir Gawain’s pentacle).” Crépin

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notes that through a “vocabulary of the arts” and the way nature comes into play solely through art, the poem brings light on stage. “The landscape is presented as a set . . . the elements in it are not in the least natural: tree trunks are blue as Indian pastels, the gravel consists of precious stones . . . the ref lection of leaves and gems exceeds the sun’s rays in splendor . . . .” As precious materials “transmute the body (hair of gold, face of ivory),” beings reveal their luminous corporeity. “It is, in the literal sense of adubement, a transfiguration,” Crépin explains. Indeed Gawain’s armored body is transfigured likewise in the other poem: “his surcoat blazoned bold . . . the least latchet or loop laden with gold . . . ; his helm . . . all bound and embroidered with the best gems on broad bands of silk . . . ; the diadem . . . with diamonds richly set that f lashed as if on fire.”96 One critic describes the techniques used during the filming of Excalibur as lending themselves to just such a process of transfiguration by cinematographic means. In so doing, he employs vocabulary precisely in line with elements that compose the merveilleux of Arthurian romance: Down in the valley, green light filtered up . . . . In the shimmering bower of a forest . . . John Boorman strode between scene and camera, priming and polishing this tableau . . . [and] surveyed his lighting plan for the shooting. The green filters placed over the arc lamps bathed the landscape in a lyric vernal glow.97

This tradition-sensitive critic perceives that nature is qualitatively and quantitatively amplified to become a lyrical, shimmering tableau. Here, film technology achieves what is depicted in scenes inhabited by the merveilleux in medieval romance. “We’re using green gels in the forest exteriors,” Boorman explains, “to give a kind of luminous quality, and to emphasize the moss and the leaves. It breathes a little magic into the scene; it gives it a sense of otherworldliness.”98 Boorman’s meticulous quest for otherworldliness by means of light and color reenacts the characteristics of the Pearl poet’s Green Knight, whose garments and equipment “gleamed all and glinted with green gems about.”99 The poet—who in Pearl calls his own words “jewels,” and whose writing “leaves upon the memory a durable impression of luminosity,” according to Crépin—styles himself a “joyful jueler.”100 Such might the appreciative viewer say of Boorman when it is acknowledged that “almost every image [in the movie] seems steeped in metal, that of armor, of weapons, and of the Grail.”101 To resort to metal- or gold-working, therefore, is not preciosity; rather, it performs a central function in accommodating physical beings to light. Witness the terms in which John Boorman describes the operation of conversion: “Alchemy. Film takes a hold of physical things (actors,

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sets, equipment, money) and changes them into light. You spend all those millions, all to [obtain] nothing other than light.”102 His words are, in their way, similar to those of Abbot Suger: “Do not marvel at gold and expense, but at the mastery of the work. Luminous is this noble work, but, nobly luminous, it will illuminate minds . . . .”103 When the result lives up to expectation, “cinema is above all a visual experience, and Excalibur illustrates better than any other film the unlimited potential of the medium.”104 This may be because for Boorman, light is the absolute referent. In his words, “light is unsurpassable”; it leads to another world.105 Boorman was expressing himself when he made Merlin say “there are other worlds,” because, as the director sees it, “making movies is itself a quest—a quest for an alternative world . . . . That’s what first appealed to me about making films. It seemed to me a wonderful idea that you could remake the world, hopefully . . . more beautiful than it was presented to us.”106 In his quest for beauty, Boorman transposes onto the silver screen a medieval aesthetic that represented the true intelligibility of the Arthurian world in visions of light and color. Excalibur is, in both its diegetic and aesthetic narratives, an ingenious continuation of Arthurian legend, another magnificent layer in the successive rewritings or re-presentations that carry on the tradition down through the centuries. Notes 1. For Yas Banifatemi: “La vraie beauté rend les hommes unanimes” (viz. notes 49 and 50). 2. John Boorman, dir. and prod., with Rospo Pallenberg, screenplay, Excalibur (Orion Pictures Corporation, 1981; Warner Home Video DVD, 1999). 3. I have endeavored to provide references to existing English-language translations whenever possible; otherwise all translations and paraphrases from the French are mine. André Crépin, “Note sur l’éclat de la perle (‘Pearl’, poème du 14e siècle),” in La lumière. Culture et religion dans les pays anglophones (Paris: Didier- érudition, 1996), p. 113 [113–18]. 4. Quoted in Jacques Munier, “Les états de la lumière: Symbolique du clairobscure,” Les Chemins de la Connaissance, France Culture radio broadcast, June 6, 2007. 5. Robert Grosseteste quoted in Abel Gance, Prisme: carnets d’un cinéaste, pref. Elie Faure (1930; re- ed. Paris: Samuel Tastet, 1986), p. 218. 6. Grosseteste citing Avicebron (Solomon ben Yehudah Ibn Gebirol) in Edouard Wéber, “La lumière principe de l’univers d’après Robert Grosseteste,” in Lumière et cosmos: courants occultes de la philosophie de la nature, ed. Antoine Faivre, Geneviève Javary, Jean-François Maillard, Sylvain Matton, Cahiers de l’hermétisme (Paris: Albin Michel, 1981), p. 23 [16–30].

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7. Robert Grosseteste, On Light (De Luce), or the Beginning of Forms, trans. and intro. Clare C. Riedl (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1942). Online at the Athenaeum Reading Room, http://evans- experientialism. freewebspace.com/grosseteste.htm. 8. Gance, Prisme, p. 218. 9. Eleventh to thirteenth century. The Victorines and St. Bonaventure are also associated with the Oxford School; see Edgar De Bruyne, Etudes d’esthétique médiévale, pref. Maurice de Gandillac; postface Michel Lemoine, 2 vols. (1946; Paris: Albin Michel, 1998), 2:3–9 in particular. 10. Along with his teacher Ammonius Saccas. See http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Plotinus. Neoplatonism is an original creation that is both a combination of and a meditation on the philosophical heritage of Greek Antiquity (especially Plato, Aristotle, and Pythagoras) with currents of Eastern spirituality mixed in. Neoplatonism had a decisive inf luence on medieval thinking and art. See particularly Erwin Panofsky, Architecture gothique et pensée scolastique, précédé de L’Abbé Suger de Saint-Denis (Paris: Minuit, 1967), and Esthétique et Philosophie de l’Art. Repères historiques et thématiques (Brussels: De Boeck et Larcier, 2002). 11. “Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite . . . combined Neoplatonic faith in the fundamental oneness and luminous life of the world with Christian dogma.” Panofsky, Architecture gothique, p. 34. 12. In particular, a formal substance like “corporeity” has no equivalent nowadays. It is a concept that belongs to the Neoplatonic cosmology structured on a “division” of the world into sensorial and intelligible. Light and matter that derive from this construction coincide only partially with our current conceptions. This explains the false familiarity or the troubling foreignness we feel when confronted with works that refer to this Neoplatonic tradition. In this article, I hope this way of looking at the visionary cosmography of Boorman’s film will give some notion of how fundamentally aesthetic and, especially in this respect, how consistent and comprehensible this tradition of thinking is. 13. De Bruyne, Etudes d’esthétique, 2:20, citing St. Bonaventure. 14. (See notes 35 and 103 and corresponding text.) 15. Etienne Gilson, Le Thomisme: introduction à la philosophie de Saint Thomas d’Aquin, 6th ed. (Paris: Vrin, 1989), p. 339. 16. De Bruyne, Etudes d’esthétique, 2:16, 1:629, 2:393. 17. Umberto Eco, Art et beauté dans l’esthétique médiévale, trans. Maurice Javion (Paris: Grasset, 1997). 18. Notwithstanding the critical debates raised by Michel Lemoine in the 1998 postface to De Bruyne’s Etudes d’esthétique. 19. Michel Foucault, Les Mots et les Choses. Une archéologie des sciences humaines (Paris: Gallimard, 1966); De Bruyne, Etudes d’esthétique, 1:639. 20. De Bruyne, Etudes d’esthétique, 2:10, 1:298, 1:439. 21. Olivier Assayas, “Graal pompier,” Cahiers du cinéma 326 ( July–August 1981): 61–62. 22. About Boorman’s extensive knowledge of the Arthurian tradition, see, for instance, Michel Ciment, “Deux entretiens avec John Boorman,”

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23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

28.

29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

34.

35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45.

46.

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Positif 242 (May 1981): 18–31. Boorman’s film has even been called erudite, for the medieval “springtime ride” of the knights is not common knowledge. See note 72 and corresponding text. De Bruyne, Etudes d’esthétique, 1:287–88. “Excalibur (film),” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excalibur_ (film). Boorman, dir. and prod., with Pallenberg, screenplay, Excalibur. Hereafter, all citations from the screenplay are formatted in this fashion. De Bruyne, Etudes d’esthétique, 2:27. Italics in the original. Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival, trans. Danielle Buschinger, Wolfgang Spiewok and Jean-Marc Pastré (Paris: Christian Bourgois, 1989), pp. 241, 33 and 225. Chrétien de Troyes, Perceval ou Le Conte du Graal, in Œuvres completes, ed. Daniel Poirion with Anne Berthelot, Peter F. Dembowski, Sylvie Lefèvre, Karl D. Uitti, and Philippe Walter. Bibliothèque de la Pléïade (Paris: Gallimard, 1994), p. 799. Lancelot speaks of his “metal skin” at the end of the scene. De Bruyne, Etudes d’esthétique, 2:23. Cynthia Fleury, Métaphysique de l’imagination, 2nd ed. (Paris: Editions d’écarts, 2001), pp. 263–64. Grosseteste, On Light, trans. Riedl. Paul Vignaux, Philosophie au Moyen Age, ed. Ruedi Imbach (Paris: Vrin, 2004), p. 165 and 166–67, citing Grosseteste’s commentary on Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics. Albert Wilder Thompson, The Elucidation: A Prologue to the Conte del Graal (New York: Publications of the Institute of French Studies, 1931). Introduction and English translation: “The Elucidation,” intro. Norris Lacy; trans. William Kibler (2007), The Camelot Project, University of Rochester, http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/elucidation.htm. On Rimbaud, see note 51 and corresponding text. Georges Duby, L’Europe des cathédrales. 1140–1280, 2nd ed. (Geneva: Skira, 1984), p. 14. Panofsky, Architecture gothique, p.30. In line with the Plotinian concept of intelligibility. Duby, L’Europe des cathédrales, p. 26. De Bruyne, Etudes d’esthétique, 1:293–94. Cited by De Bruyne, Etudes d’esthétique, 2:493. De Bruyne, Etudes d’esthétique, 1:544, paraphasing a poem by Marbode of Rennes (c.1035–1143). Grosseteste, On light, trans. Riedl. De Bruyne, Etudes d’esthétique, 2:22, citing Bonaventure. De Bruyne, Etudes d’esthétique, 2:21. Richard of Saint Victor, Les Quatre Degrés de la Violente Charité, ed. and trans. Gervais Dumeige, Textes Philosophiques du Moyen Age 3 (Paris: Vrin, 1955), p. 170. Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, Le Roman de la Rose, trans. André Mary (Paris: Gallimard, 1984), p. 272.

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47. “[H]e drewe his swerd Excalibur, but it was so bryght in his enemyes eyen that it gaf light lyke thirty torchys . . .” Sir Thomas Malory, Complete Works, ed. Eugène Vinaver, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), “The Tale of King Arthur,” Bk 1, ch. 9, p. 12. 48. Fleury, Métaphysique de l’imagination, pp. 263–64. 49. De Bruyne, Etudes d’esthétique, 2:304–305, citing Thomas Aquinas, Opuscula omnia genuina, ed. Pierre Mandonnet (Paris: Letheillieux, 1927), pp. 365–66. 50. See De Bruyne, Etudes d’esthétique, 2:304–305. 51. Unless otherwise indicated, all quotations in this section are from Arthur Rimbaud, Une saison en enfer, “Délires II, Alchimie du verbe,” in Œuvres complètes, ed. André Guyaux with Aurélia Cervoni. Bibliothèque de la Pléïade (Paris: Gallimard, 2009), pp. 263–69; cf. Chrétien de Troyes, Perceval, in Œuvres complètes, ed. Daniel Poirion et al., pp. 687–704. 52. Chrétien de Troyes, Perceval, in Œuvres completes, ed. Daniel Poirion et al., p. 697. 53. Chrétien de Troyes, Perceval, or the Story of the Grail, trans. Kirk McElhearn (2001), http://www.mcelhearn.com/dl/perceval2.pdf, ll. 641–60. Note: Vermeil is an indeterminate color; see §”Literary Photogenics” for its definition as “light.” 54. Cristina Noacco, “Le ‘sens’ de la lumière dans les portraits de Chrétien de Troyes,” in Feu et Lumière au Moyen Âge II, Travaux du Groupe de Recherches “Lectures Médiévales,” Université de Toulouse II (Éditions Universitaires du Sud and Honoré Champion, 1999), p. 143 [129–45]. 55. Augustine, The City of God, trans. Marcus Dods, in A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, ed. Philip Schaff, vol. 2 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1886), Book 10, chap. 2, p. 181. Online at Christian Classics Ethereal Library, Calvin College, http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/ npnf102/Page_181.html. Note: The replacement of heavenly “spirits” with “angels” for greater consistency is justified by the same usage in Bk. 10, ch. 1. 56. Tiziana Suárez-Nani, Connaissance et langage des anges selon Thomas d’Aquin et Gilles de Rome (Paris: Vrin, 2002), pp. 37–38. 57. Chrétien de Troyes, Perceval, trans. McElhearn, ll. 138; 180–81; 282; 332–34. 58. Suárez-Nani, Connaissance et langage, p. 39. 59. This and the following citation from Noacco, “Le ‘sens’ de la lumière,” p. 130. Italics in the original. Note: Senefiance or sénéfiance can be translated as “signification” or “meaning,” in line with Daniel Poirion’s definition—“Senefiance refers to the overarching truth of an allegorical text.” Yet the term can also be understood as the process of achieving sense, of becoming wise, thus “enlightenment.” 60. Jacques Le Goff, interview with François Busnel, Lire: le magazine littéraire (May 2005). Online at http://www.lire.fr/entretien.asp?idC=48477&id R=201&idTC=4&idG=.

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61. Jacques Le Goff, Héros et merveilles du Moyen Age (Paris: Seuil, 2005), p. 10. 62. Christine Ferlampin-Acher, Merveilles et Topique Merveilleuse dans les Romans Médiévaux. Nouvelle bibliothèque du Moyen âge (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2003). This and the citations that follow in this section are from pp. 154–55 unless indicated otherwise. 63. Ferlampin-Acher, Merveilles et Topique Merveilleuse, p. 157. 64. De Bruyne, Etudes d’esthétique, 1:177. 65. Noacco, “Le ‘sens’ de la lumière,” p. 130. 66. Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy: Paradise, trans. Henry Francis Cary. E-book #1007. Last updated November 21, 2005. Online at Project Gutenberg, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1007/1007.txt, Canto XXXIII. 67. Noacco, “Le ‘sens’ de la lumière,” p. 130. 68. Ernst Hartwig Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology, pref. William C. Jordan, 7th ed. (1957; repr. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), pp. 271–72. 69. De Bruyne, Etudes d’esthétique, 2:224–25, adapted from St. Bonaventure. 70. Roger Icart, ed. Abel Gance, un soleil dans chaque image (Paris: CNRS éditions and Cinémathèque française, 2002), p. 124. 71. Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival, p. 224. Cf. Godric of Finchale, who, toughened by the ascetic practice of wearing heavy chain mail, was nevertheless discovered to have resplendent, glowing, and luminous (nitidiorem, relucentem, praeclarissimam) skin. See Katherine Allen Smith, “Saints in Shining Armor: Martial Asceticism and Masculine Models of Sanctity, ca. 1050–1250,” Speculum 83.3 ( July 2008): 594–95 [572–602]. 72. François-Jérôme Beaussart, “Mass media et Moyen Age: à propos du film Excalibur,” Médiévales 1.1 (1982): 36 [34–38]. 73. Chrétien de Troyes, Perceval, trans. McElhearn, ll. 69–73 and 127–36. 74. Paul- Georges Sansonetti, Chevalerie du graal et lumière de gloire (Menton: Exèdre, 2005), p. 26. 75. Sansonetti, Chevalerie du graal, p. 26 76. Sansonetti, Chevalerie du graal, p. 25, citing Chrétien de Troyes, Perceval, ll. 2764 and 7905–06. 77. The rhyme between vermeil* and soleil functions in Old French romance as well (e.g., vermaus/solaus), frequently alongside merveil*. 78. Sansonetti, Chevalerie du graal, p. 27. 79. Sansonetti, Chevalerie du graal, p. 29. 80. “Non pedum passibus, sed desideriis quaeritur Deus” (Saint Bernard), cited by Michel Zink in a lecture, “Que cherchaient les quêteurs du Graal?” at the Collège de France, Dec. 11, 2008, France Culture radio broadcast. 81. As in medieval descriptions of the château merveilleux, viz. FerlampinAcher, Merveilles et Topique Merveilleuse, p. 154. “En la vile ot cent tors vermielles . . . et furent de marbre vermel” (ll. 1897–99). 82. Ferlampin-Acher, Merveilles et Topique Merveilleuse, p. 162.

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83. Malory, Complete Works, “The Departure,” Bk. 13, ch. 7, p. 521, and “The Miracle of Galahad,” Bk. 17, ch. 20, p. 603. 84. Sansonetti, Chevalerie du graal, p. 64. 85. De Bruyne, Etudes d’esthétique, 2:23. 86. De Bruyne, Etudes d’esthétique, 1:298, quoting from Isidore’s Etymologies, Book XVI. 87. Georges Foveau, Merlin l’enchanteur, scénariste et scénographe d’Excalibur (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1995), p. 89. 88. Boorman, Excalibur (Warner Home Video DVD). 89. Merlin: “I built [this castle], dullard!” Perceval: “All on your own?” Merlin: “Yes.” This dialog implies that the parchments displayed around the (humorously anachronistic) press are castle blueprints. 90. On alchemy, art, merveilles, and metal, see, for instance, Jean de Meun’s ref lections in the Roman de la Rose, ll. 1240-1305. 91. Quoted by Panofsky, Architecture gothique, pp. 39–40. 92. Jean-Marc Lofficier, “Sur nos écrans—Excalibur,” L’écran fantastique 19 (1981): 67 [66- 67]. 93. De Bruyne, Etudes d’esthétique, 1:628–29. 94. Ferlampin-Acher, Merveilles et Topique Merveilleuse, p. 77. 95. Crépin, “Note sur l’éclat” (see note 3). Citations hereafter refer to pages 114–17, especially 115. 96. Marie Borroff, trans., Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (New York: Norton, 1967), ll. 586–618. 97. Harlan Kennedy, “Excalibur: John Boorman—In Interview,” American Film (March 1981). http://americancinemapapers.homestead.com/files/ Excalibur.htm. 98. Kennedy, “Excalibur: John Boorman.” 99. Borroff, trans., Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, l. 172. 100. Crépin, “Note sur l’éclat,” pp. 114 and 115. 101. See http://tropiqueducancre.free.fr/cinema.html. 102. John Boorman, “Conseils aux débutants,” translated into French by Alain Masson from an unpublished text in English, Positif 580 ( June 2009): 46 [44–46]. 103. Panofsky, Architecture gothique, p .43. 104. Lofficier, “Sur nos écrans,” 67. 105. Boorman, “Conseils aux débutants,” 46. 106. Kennedy, “Excalibur: John Boorman.”

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Vezin, Jean. “Leofnoth. Un scribe anglais à Saint-Benoît- sur-Loire.” Codices manuscripti 3 (1977): 109–120. Vignaux, Paul. Philosophie au Moyen Age. Edited by Ruedi Imbach. Paris: Vrin, 2004. Waite, Gregory G. “The Vocabulary of the Old English Version of Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica.” PhD dissertation, University of Toronto, 1985. DAI 46A (1985). Wallace-Hadrill, John Michael. The Barbarian West 400–1000. 1952; rev. ed. London: Blackwell, 1996. ———. “Bede and Plummer.” In Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People: A Historical Commentary. 1988; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. pp. xv–xxxv. Originally published in J.M. Wallace-Hadrill. Early Medieval History. Oxford: Blackwell, 1975. Walts, P.R. “The Strange Case of Geoffrey Chaucer and Cecilia Chaumpaigne.” Law Quarterly Review 63 (1947): 491–515. Wéber, Edouard. “La lumière principe de l’univers d’après Robert Grosseteste.” In Lumière et cosmos: courants occultes de la philosophie de la nature. Edited by Antoine Faivre, Geneviève Javary, Jean-François Maillard, Sylvain Matton et al. Cahiers de l’hermétisme. Paris: Albin Michel, 1981. pp. 16–30. Weijers, Olga, ed. Vocabulaire du livre et de l’écriture au moyen âge. CIVICIMA: Études sur le vocabulaire intellectuel du moyen âge 2. Turnhout: Brepols, 1989. Whetter, Keith Sean. Understanding Genre and Medieval Romance. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008. Whitbread, Leslie. “Wulfstan Homilies XXIX, XXX, and Some Related Texts.” Anglia 81 (1963): 347–64. Whitelock, Dorothy. “The List of Chapter-Headings in the Old English Bede.” In Old English Studies in Honour of John C. Pope. Edited by Robert B. Burlin and Edward B. Irving, Jr. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974. pp. 263–84. ———. “The Old English Bede.” Sir Israel Gollancz Memorial Lecture, 1962. In British Academy Papers on Anglo-Saxon England. Edited by E.G. Stanley. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990. pp. 227–61. Wiesenekker, Evert. “The Vespasian and Junius Psalters Compared: Glossing or Translation?” Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik 40 (1994): 21–39. ———. “Word be worde, andgit of andgite”: Translation Performance in the Old English Interlinear Glosses of the “Vespasian,” “Regius,” and “Lambeth” Psalters. Huizen: J. Bout, 1991. Wilcox, Jonathan. “Variant Texts of an Old English Homily: Vercelli X and Stylistic Readers.” In Szarmach and Rosenthal, eds. The Preservation and Transmission of Anglo-Saxon Culture. pp. 335–51. Wilmart, André. Codices Reginenses Latini. Vol. 1. Vatican: Bibliotheca Vaticana, 1937. Wormald, Francis. English Drawings of the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries. London: Faber & Faber, 1952.

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Wormald, Francis. “The ‘Winchester School’ before St. Ethelwold.” In Francis Wormald: Collected Writings I. Studies in Medieval Art from the Sixth to the Twelfth Centuries. Edited by J.J.G. Alexander, T. J. Brown and J. Gibbs. Oxford: Harvey Miller Publishers/Oxford University Press, 1984. pp. 76–84. Originally published in England before the Conquest: Studies in Primary Sources Presented to Dorothy Whitelock. Edited by Peter Clemoes and Kathleen Hughes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971. pp. 305–312. Wormald, Patrick. “The Venerable Bede and the ‘Church of the English.’ ” In The English Religious Tradition and the Genius of Anglicanism. Edited by G. Rowell. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. pp. 13–32. Zink, Michel. “Que cherchaient les quêteurs du Graal?” Collège de France lecture. December 11, 2008. France Culture radio broadcast.

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CONTRIBUTORS

Gila Aloni, associate professor and chair of the English department at Lynn University (Boca Raton, Florida), has published in French, Hebrew, and English. After receiving a PhD summa cum laude from the Sorbonne (Paris 4) in 1999 and publishing her dissertation as her first book, Dr. Aloni has held several postdoctoral appointments, which include New York University and Fordham University. Aloni’s interdisciplinary research on Geoffrey Chaucer’s multilingualism, reinscription of his classical sources, and use of rhetoric with a psychoanalytical orientation has been published in various prominent journals in her field, including The Mediterranean Historical Review, Médiévales, The Chaucer Review, and Rhetoric Society Quarterly. Aloni’s current work takes two directions: revision of the core curriculum at Lynn University, for which she edited two books, and a project on Chaucer’s dream vision. Florence Bourgne is an alumna of the École Normale Supérieure at the rue d’Ulm, Paris. She wrote her doctoral dissertation on Chaucer’s Troilus under André Crépin’s supervision. She is now a tenured associate professor at the Sorbonne (Paris 4), where she teaches medieval English literature and culture and runs a medieval English paleography seminar. Her publications include The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer (Paris: Armand Colin, 2003). Leo Carruthers, born in Dublin, Ireland, studied at University College Dublin (MA, 1972) before moving to France to pursue research at the Sorbonne (Paris 4). His PhD thesis (1980) was devoted to the English translations of the Somme le Roi, and in 1987 he was awarded the French State Doctorate for his work on Jacob’s Well, which belongs to the same tradition. In 1988 he helped to set up the International Medieval Sermon Studies Society and was elected its first president. Since 1994 he has been professor of English at the Sorbonne, and since 2006, president of the AMAES, the French Association for Medieval English Studies. He has written on many aspects of Old and Middle English literature, from

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Beowulf to Everyman, with a particular emphasis on religious themes and the historical contexts. Raeleen Chai-Elsholz, an independent scholar and technical translator, is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College (BA/MA) and the Sorbonne (Paris 4). Her doctoral dissertation (2003) explored narrative strategies in Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica. The historiography and hagiography of late antiquity, Anglo- Saxon England, and the early medieval West, as well as their reception in later periods, have been her primary focuses of research. She is currently a member of the board of directors of the International Medieval Society in Paris, and also publishes on various ecclesiastical topics and personalities from eighteenth-century Italy. She was co-organizer, with Tatjana Silec, of the CÉMA conference in 2008, from which many of the papers in this volume developed. Jean-Marc Elsholz is completing his doctoral dissertation under the direction of Jean Gili and Nicole Brenez in the art history and film studies department of the Université Panthéon- Sorbonne (Paris 1). Alongside his professional activities in information science and knowledge management for the legal professions, he has published articles in Positif, one of France’s foremost journals in the field of cinema. His advanced studies (DEA) thesis, “Les Voies de l’Immortalité selon Stanley Kubrick: repères pour une étude esthétique et philosophale de 2001: l’Odyssée de l’espace,” was distinguished by the Sindacato Nazionale Giornalisti Cinematografici Italiani (Premio Sacchi, 2000). Adrian Papahagi (BA, MA, PhD Sorbonne) specializes in early medieval studies. His research areas are Anglo-Saxon and Germanic languages and literatures, medieval Latin, and manuscript studies. He has edited and coedited four volumes of proceedings, and has published articles in such periodicals as Medium Ævum, Scriptorium, Notes & Queries, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, Critica del Testo, and Comptes Rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. He is currently an assistant professor at the University of Cluj, Romania, where he teaches Old English language and literature, and manuscript studies. Jane Roberts is a senior research fellow at the Institute of English Studies and emeritus professor of English language and medieval literature in the University of London. Her recent publications include A Guide to Scripts Used in English Writing up to 1500 (British Library Publications, 2005); TOE Online (2005) with Flora Edmonds, Christian Kay, and Irené Wotherspoon; Text, Image, Interpretation: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Literature in Honour of Éamonn Ó Carragáin (Brepols, 2007) with Alastair Minnis; Lambeth Palace Library and Its Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts (Taderon Press,

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2007) with David Ganz. She is one of the four editors of the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary (2009). Sharon M. Rowley earned a PhD from the University of Chicago in 1996, with the dissertation “Reading Miracles in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People.” Currently associate professor of English at Christopher Newport University (Newport News, Virginia), Dr. Rowley has published several articles about Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, the Old English version of Bede’s HE in its manuscript contexts, and other medieval texts. In 2007, Dr. Rowley was awarded a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities and a visiting fellowship at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, to work on a study of the OEHE, The Old English Version of Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, in press). She is also working on a new edition of the OEHE, which has not been edited in its entirety for more than one hundred years. Tatjana Silec is a tenured assistant professor at the Sorbonne, where she teaches English literature and culture as well as the history of the English language. She recently earned a PhD summa cum laude from the Sorbonne with a dissertation on court jesters in medieval and Renaissance literature. Her research is anthropologically oriented and focuses on the presentation of folly in drama. She has also written on Tolkien. In 2008 she started studying drama from a professional perspective, as she was admitted to Les Ateliers du Sudden, an acting school in Paris that offers training in French and English. She was co-organizer, with Raeleen Chai-Elsholz, of the CÉMA conference in 2008, which was at the origin of the present book. Colette Stévanovitch is a professor in the English department of Nancy-Université. Her field of research is medieval English literature. She has edited the Old English poems Genesis and Christ II and published numerous papers on Old and Middle English poetry. She founded the GRENDEL research group (Groupe de Recherche et d’Etude Nancéien sur la Diachronie et sur l’Emergence de la Littérature Anglaise) in 1998, and is currently head of IDEA (Interdisciplinarité dans les Etudes Anglophones), a research unit at Nancy-Université. Peter A. Stokes completed his doctorate at the University of Cambridge on eleventh-century English vernacular script after receiving honors degrees in classics and English literature and in computer engineering. He was then research associate on the LangScape project of AngloSaxon boundary clauses at the Centre for Computing in Humanities at King’s College London, which involved consulting original manuscripts, XML markup, and developing new software. He is now Leverhulme

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early career fellow in paleography at Cambridge, where he is developing new quantitative and computer-based methods for handwriting identification. He has also worked at the British Library on digital images of Greek palimpsests and was consultant for the Hearth Tax project and the European Medieval Medicine Documents Identification System. He has been lecturing in paleography and codicology at Cambridge since 2004, and is principle coordinator of a UK-wide training scheme called “Medieval Manuscript Studies in the Digital Age.” Paul E. Szarmach is executive director of the Medieval Academy of America and editor of Speculum (from 2006). His previous service includes thirteen years as director of the Medieval Institute at Western Michigan University, where he was also professor of English and medieval studies. He retired from Western Michigan in 2007 with emeritus status. His twenty-four years at the State University of New York at Binghamton included fifteen years as director of the Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies. Szarmach was a member of the board of directors of the SUNY Research Foundation (1986–94). He also received a Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching (1977). He has been the principal investigator or co-PI in numerous grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, including ten NEH summer institutes or seminars. In 2004 he received the Officer’s Cross of the Legion of Merit from the Republic of Poland. Szarmach was elected fellow of the Medieval Academy in 2006, when he also received the Robert L. Kindrick Service Award from Centers and Regional Associations, a standing committee of the Academy. Claire Vial, agrégée d’anglais, an alumna of the Ecole Normale Supérieure at Fontenay- Saint Cloud, is an associate professor of English at the University of Paris 3 Sorbonne Nouvelle. Her research interests are the history of medieval imagination and its iconographic expressions. Her initial field of studies centered on feasts and festivals and their literary representations in the late Middle Ages. She has published several articles on Chaucer, Lydgate, Malory, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Beowulf. Another of her areas of research covers the interplay between courtly and popular literature. This has led her to work on Middle English lyrics, the Middle English Breton lays, and English medieval drama, as well as Shakespearian drama. Her most recent article is “Everyman and the Bowels of Tragedy” (March 2009). She organized the international CÉMA conference held in March 2009 at the Château de Vincennes on the theme “Love and the Sea in Medieval England: From Linguistics to History and Literary Creation.”

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INDEX OF MANUSCRIPTS CITED

Manuscripts, by codex name Archimedes palimpsest (Baltimore, Walters Art Museum) 35, 56n1, 83, 91n10 Arundel Psalter (London, BL Arundel 60) 64, 67, 70, 75n20, 76n34 & n35 Auchinleck Manuscript (Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, Advocates MS 19.2.1) 119, 122, 132n13, 133n16, 187, 188n2 & n27 Beowulf Manuscript (London, BL Cotton Vitellius A. xv) 82–3, 91n8 & n9, 155n31, 240 Blickling Homilies (Princeton, Princeton University W.H. Scheide Library, Scheide M71) 6, 77n44 Blickling Psalter (New York, Pierpont Morgan Library 776) 61, 64, 74n4 Bosworth Psalter (London, BL Additional 37517) 63, 64, 74n4 & n15, 76n36 Bury Bible (Cambridge, CCC MS 2.1) 125, 134n30 Caligula Troper (London, BL Cotton Caligula A. xiv) 128, 135n43 Codex Amiatinus (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana, MS Amiatino 1) 2 Cuthbercht Gospels (Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. Lat. 1224) 127, 134n37 Dover Bible (Cambridge, CCC MS 4) 127, 134n39 Eadwine Psalter (Cambridge, Trinity College MS R. 17. 1) 64-5, 74n4, 75n21, 127, 134n40 Épinal Glossary (Épinal, Bibliothèque Multimédia Intercommunale, MS 72) 91n7 Holkham Bible Picture Book (London, BL Additional 47682) 16n37, 126, 128, 134n34 Junius Psalter (Oxford, Bodleian Junius 27) 62, 64, 70, 74n5 & n8, 78n52 Lambeth Psalter (Lambeth Palace Library 427) xiii, 64–70, 72, 75n18 Lindisfarne Gospels (London, BL Cotton Nero D. IV) 61, 73n2, 77n48 Macregol Gospels (Oxford, Bodleian Auctarium D.2.19) 61, 77n48 (Rushworth) Paris Psalter (Paris, BnF lat. 8824) 64, 74n6 Percy Folio Manuscript (London, BL Additional 27897) 193-5, 203n6 & n10 Petites Heures du Duc de Berry (Paris, BnF lat. 18014) 128, 135n45 Regius Psalter (London, BL Royal 2 B. v) 62-8, 70-2, 74n11, 76n32, 77n43, 78n50, n55 & n59–60, 79n70 Salisbury Psalter (Salisbury, Cathedral 150) 63–4, 70, 72, 74n7 & n12–14, 76n34 & n38, 77n43, 78n56 & n61, 79n63 & n67 Vercelli Book (Vercelli, Cathedral Library, MS CXVII) 15n22, 87, 94n33 & n36 Vernon Manuscript (Oxford, Bodleian Eng. Poet. a 1) 128–9, 131, 135n48, 136n59

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IN DEX OF M A N USCRIPTS CITED

Vespasian Psalter (London, BL Cotton Vespasian A. i) 61–6, 70, 74n4, 76n32, 78n50 & n52, 79n66 Vitellius Psalter (London, BL Cotton Vitellius E. xviii) 64-8, 71–2, 75, 75n19 & n26, 76n34–5, 77n42, 79n70 Winchcombe Psalter (Cambridge, CUL Ff. i. 23) 63, 64, 70, 74n4, 75n16 Winchcombe Sacramentary (Orléans, BM MS 127 (105)) 24, 31n25 Winchester Benedictional (Paris, BnF lat. 987) 24

Manuscripts, by location Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, Archimedes palimpsest 35, 56n1, 83, 91n10 Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, Lat. MS 4° 364 (Fleury palimpsest) 24 Bern, Burgerbibliothek MS 611 (possible Fleury palimpsest) 32n30 Cambridge Cambridge University Library (CUL) Ff. i. 23 (Winchcombe Psalter aka Cambridge Psalter) 63, 64, 70, 74n4, 75n16 Ii. 3. 26 (Charter of Christ) 129–30, 135n56 Kk.3.18 (Old English version of Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica) 96–9, 111n26 Corpus Christi College (CCCC) MS 2.1 (Bury Bible) 125, 134n30 MS 4 (Dover Bible) 127, 134n39 MS 41 (Old English version of Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica) 96–8, 103, 111n20 & n23 MS 201 (Wulfstan’s Sermo Lupi) 86, 93n28–31 MS 419 (Wulfstan’s Sermo Lupi) 86, 93n28–31 MS 422 (Solomon and Saturn and “Red Book of Darley”) 36, 57n7–8, 82 Gonville and Caius College, MS 350/567 134n33, 125–6 Magdalene College, Pepys 2981 (18) 57n4 St. John’s College, MS 59 76n36 Trinity College, MS R. 17. 1 (Eadwine Psalter) 64–5, 74n4, 75n21, 119, 127, 134n40 Chantilly, Musée Condé, MS 71 (Heures d’Étienne Chevalier) 128, 135n46 Durham, Cathedral Library MS A. ii. 16 57n4 MS B. III. 32 63 Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, Adv. MS 19.2.1 (Auchinleck Manuscript) 119, 122, 132n13, 133n16, 187, 188n2 & n27 Épinal, Bibliothèque Multimédia Intercommunale, MS 72 (Épinal Glossary) 91n7 Florence, Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana, Ms. Amiatino 1 (Codex Amiatinus) 2 Karlsruhe, Landesbibliothek Aug. CLXVII 91n5 Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek, Voss Lat. Q.106 (contains Leiden Riddle) 24 London British Library (BL) Additional 27897 (Percy Folio Manuscript containing Sir Lambewell) 193–5, 203n6 & n10

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IN DEX OF M A N USCRIPTS CITED

257

Add. 35298 (Gilte Legende) 119 Add. 37517 (Bosworth Psalter) 63, 64, 74n4 & n15, 76n36 Add. 47682 (Holkham Bible Picture Book) 16n37, 126, 128, 134n34 Arundel 60 (Arundel Psalter) 64, 67, 70, 75n20, 76n34 & n35 Cotton Augustus ii. 6 36, 57n7 Cotton Caligula A. ii (Charter of Christ and Thomas Chestre’s Sir Launfal) 129-30, 135n55, 194 Cotton Caligula A. xiv (Caligula Troper) 128, 135n43 Cotton Domitian A.IX (Old English version of Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica) 96, 109n10 Cotton Julius A. vi 63 Cotton Nero A.i 85–7 Cotton Nero A. x (Pearl) 132n10, 118 Cotton Nero D. IV (Lindisfarne Gospels) 61, 73n2, 77n48 Cotton Otho B.XI (Old English version of Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica) 96–7 Cotton Tiberius B. v 57n6 Cotton Tiberius C. vi (glossed psalter) 75n19 Cotton Vespasian A. i (Vespasian Psalter) 61–6, 70, 74n4, 76n32, 78n50 & n52, 79n66 Cotton Vespasian D. xii 63 Cotton Vitellius A.xv (Beowulf manuscript) 82–3, 91n8 & n9, 155n31, 240 Cotton Vitellius E. xviii (Vitellius Psalter) 64–8, 71–2, 75, 75n19 & n26, 76n34–5, 77n42, 79n70 Egerton 3245 115–16, 132n2 Harley 2346 (Charter of Christ) 129, 135n54 Harley 4431 (works of Christine de Pizan) 127, 134n42 Royal 2 B. v (Regius Psalter) 62–8, 70–2, 74n11, 76n32, 77n43, 78n50, n55 & n59–60, 79n70 Royal 7 C xii 84 Royal 4 A. xiv 71 Stowe 2 (glossed psalter) 64, 75n19 Lambeth Palace Library 427 (Lambeth Psalter) 64–70, 72, 75n18 Milan, Ambrosiana M. 12 sup. 91n5 New Haven, Yale University Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library MS 262 83 New York, Pierpont Morgan Library 776 (Blickling Psalter) 61, 64, 74n4 Orléans, Bibliothèque Municipale (BM) MS 127 (105) (Winchcombe Sacramentary) 24, 31n25 MS 175 (152) 24 MS 192 (169) 24 MS 342 (290) 21-33 Oxford Bodleian Library Auctarium D.2.19 (Macregol Gospels) 61, 77n48 (Rushworth)

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IN DEX OF M A N USCRIPTS CITED

Auctarium F.III.15 [=cat. 3511] 91n5 Bodley 89 (Charter of Christ) 129, 135n53 Bodley 343 86 Bodley 596 (Lyfe of Adam) 121–2, 133n21 Eng. poet. a 1 (Vernon Manuscript) 131, 136n59 Hatton 113 (E) 86–7 Junius 27 ( Junius Psalter) 62, 64, 70, 74n5 & n8, 78n52 Rawlinson C 86 (Sir Landevale) 175, 194 Rawlinson Poet. 175 (Charter of Christ) 129, 135n52 Tanner 10 (Old English version of Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica) 96–8, 110n15 & n17, 111n20 Corpus Christi College MS 279 (Old English version of Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica) 96-9, 111n26 Trinity College MS 57 (apocryphal life of Adam and Eve, or Canticum de Creatione) 119, 127 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) fr. 1586 (Remède de Fortune) 127, 134n41 lat. 74 (twelfth-century Bible) 125, 134n32 lat. 987 (Winchester Benedictional) 24 lat. 6400G (Fleury palimpsest, fols. 112v–145v) 24 lat. 6401 (Boethius) 24 lat. 8824 (Paris Psalter) 64, 74n6 lat. 8846 (glossed psalter) 64–5 lat. 18014 (Petites Heures du Duc de Berry) 128, 135n45 Princeton, Princeton University W.H. Scheide Library, Scheide M71 (Blickling Homilies) 6, 77n44 Salisbury, Cathedral 150 (Salisbury Psalter) 63–4, 70, 72, 74n7 & n12–14, 76n34 & n38, 77n43, 78n56 & n61, 79n63 & n67 Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, 261 Vatican, Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana (BAV) 5, 14, 18 Reg. Lat. MS 74 (possible Fleury palimpsest) 32n30 Reg. Lat. 497 (palimpsested Old English Orosius, fol. 71) 57n3, 82, 91n6 Reg. Lat. MS 1283B (Fleury palimpsest) 24 Vat. Lat. MS 5757 (Cicero’s De re publica) 22, 82 Vercelli, Cathedral Library, MS CXVII (Vercelli Book) 15n22, 87, 94n33 & n36 Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. Lat. 1224 (Cuthbercht Gospels) 127, 134n37

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INDEX

Abbo of Fleury, 23, 24, 242 Abingdon, abbey, 23 Adams, Willi Paul, 108, 113, 231 Adomnán Book of Holy Places, 97 Adrevald of Fleury, 30 Aidan, bishop, 98–9 Aldred, scribe, 70, 73, 77, 245 Alfred, king of Wessex, 7–8, 15, 17, 101, 110, 111, 146, 232, 237, 238, 242, 244 translation of Augustine’s Soliloquies, 7 Aloni, Gila, 11, 157–73, 251 alteration (to a text), 3, 64, 76 addition, 25, 93, 162, 165 see also under erasure and gloss and writing Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, The, 145, 155, 231 Apollonius of Tyre, 141 Arthurian romance, see under romance Ashburnham House, see under Cotton, Robert, Sir Assayas, Olivier, 219, 222, 231 Augustine of Hippo, St., 87, 93, 143, 213, 224, 227, 228 Ælfric of Eynsham, 6, 69, 81, 84, 87–9, 94, 97, 227, 238, 247 Catholic Homilies, 84–5 De Falsis Diis, 88 Life of Saint Basil the Great, 16n35, 227 Royal manuscript, 84–5, 92, 190

Æthelbald, king of Mercia, 145, 146 Æthelred, king of England, 152 Æthelwold, bishop, 71 Baduthegn (Beadoþegn), 107–8 Basil, St., 16, 227 Baswell, Christopher, 16, 232 Battle of Maldon, The 150 Baudri of Bourgueil, 8, 15n26, 228 Bede, 8, 14, 71, 82, 95–113, 142–3, 147, 149, 228, 234, 235, 240, 246, 249, 250 De Temporum Ratione, 91 Expositio Apocalypseos, 6, 14n20 Historia ecclesiastica gentis anglorum, 15n25 Old English version of Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica (OEHE), 8, 95–113, 153n13, 189n15, 228, 230, 233, 237, 238, 244, 246–7, 249 Bel Inconnu, Le, 214 Benedict, St., 23 Benediktbeuern, abbey, 22 Beowulf, 9, 81, 83, 90, 91, 95, 139–55, 228, 229, 232–5, 237, 239–41, 243, 248, 251, 254, 255, 257 see also under Kiernan, Kevin Bernard of Chartres, 7 Bertha, daughter of Charlemagne, 146 Bethurum, Dorothy, 86–9, 93, 94, 231 Bible, books of Apocalypse/Revelations, 5, 6, 14, 228 Ecclesiasticus, 126

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IN DEX

Bischoff, Bernhard, 14, 30, 232 Bloomfield, Morton W., 81, 90, 232 Bobbio, abbey, 22, 30, 232, 239, 248 Boethius manuscript, 24, 257 Bonaventure, St., 207, 215, 222, 223, 225 Boorman, John, 205, 212–13, 215, 218, 220–3, 226, 232, 234, 240 Excalibur, 205–26 Bossi, Egidis, 158 Bourgne, Florence, 1, 8, 17, 115–36, 228, 233, 251 Bracton, Henry, 158 Breton lay (or lai), 10, 175–91, 233, 236 Sir Orfeo, 175–8, 185, 188–90, 241, 243 see also under Chestre, Thomas and Marie de France Brubaker, Leslie, 4, 13, 83, 91, 233 Byrhtnoth, ealdorman of Essex, 151 Cannon, Christopher, 158, 171, 233 Canticum de Creatione, 119, 127, 257 Carruthers, Leo, xv, xviii, 9, 139, 154n20, 173n44, 234, 251 Cassiodorus, 62 Cædmon, 101 Hymn, 101 Cerquiglini-Toulet, Jacqueline, 116, 132, 234 Charles Martel, 145 Charles the Great (Charlemagne), 30, 145–6, 155, 232 Charles the Younger, 145 The Charters of Christ, 129, 135, 231 Chartier, Roger, 2, 12, 14, 15, 234 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 1, 10–11, 17, 116, 118, 132, 155, 157–73, 187, 190, 191, 228, 233, 234, 236, 237, 239, 240, 242, 244, 246–9, 251, 254 Boece, 118 The Canterbury Tales, 139, 166, 172, 242, 251 “The Franklin’s Tale,” 176, 177, 185, 191, 240, 243

“The Miller’s Tale,” 170, 231 “The Physician’s Tale,” 166 “The Wife of Bath’s Tale,” 161, 172 The Legend of Good Women, 11, 16, 157–74 “The Legend of Ariadne,” 168 “The Legend of Hypsipyle and Medea,” 168, 169 “The Legend of Lucrece,” 166, 172, 231, 240 “The Legend of Philomela,” 11, 157–73, 240 Troilus and Criseyde, 116, 132, 167, 173, 228, 251 myswrite/mysmetre, 10, 116 Chestre, Thomas, 180, 194, 203; see also under Breton lay (or lai) Launfalus Miles (Sir Launfal), 10, 16, 175, 176, 179, 180, 190, 194–204 Childebert II, king of Austrasia, 144 Childeric III, king of the Franks, 145 Chilperic I, king of Neustria, 145 Chlochilaicus, 154 see also Hygelac Chrétien de Troyes, 189, 206, 212–16, 223–5, 228, 243 Perceval ou le Conte du Graal, 210, 212–16, 223–6, 228 see also under romance Christ Church, Canterbury, 63, 71, 78 Christine de Pizan, 127, 257 Cicero, 22 De re publica, 22, 82 Cleanness, 118, 126–7, 132, 227 Clemoes, Peter, 31, 84, 85, 92, 155, 227, 229, 234, 240, 250 Clovis, 144 Cluny, abbey, 23 Cnut the Dane, king of England, 142, 146, 147, 152 Codex Sinaiticus, 35 Coldingham, 104 Colgrave, Bertram, 14, 108, 109, 228, 234

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IN DEX

color change in pronunciation, 199 computer storage of, 40 of ink, 36, 61, 67–8, 79n62, 98, 116, 129, 131 see also under ink medieval perception of, 208, 217, 220 pixel(s), 38, 41 in recovery techniques, 40–50 relation to light, 12, 38, 220–1 RGB (red-green-blue monitor display), 38–40, 58 vermeil, 212, 216–17, 224n53 of wax, 125–6, 128 see also under light Columbanus, St., 22 Constantine the Great, 146 Copeland, Rita, 102, 112, 234 Corbie, abbey, 22 Corbin, Henry, 217 Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, xiii, 36, 55, 57, 110, 233, 253, 256 Cotton, Robert, Sir, 37, 57, 58, 244 fire at Ashburnham house, 71 Craig-McFeely, Julia, 54, 55, 57, 58, 59, 60, 234 Crépin, André, xi, xv, xvii–xviii, 1, 7, 9, 12, 14–16, 75, 95, 101, 109, 112, 134, 151, 155, 205, 219, 220, 221, 226, 228, 233, 235 Cursor Mundi, 128, 135, 229 Cuthbert, St., 14, 71, 234 Cynethryth, queen of Mercia, 146 Damico, Helen, 142, 143, 144, 154, 235 Dark Ages, 6 Dead Sea Scrolls, 35 De Bruyne, Edgar, 209, 212, 222–6, 235 Deda, abbot, 96, 105, 106 Degaré, 176, 188, 190 de Kooning, Willem, 83 Deor, 154

261

De Quincey, Thomas, 12, 13, 235 Suspiria de Profundis, 13, 17, 235 Derrida, Jacques, 9, 16, 236, 248 Dillon, Sarah, 13, 15, 236 Dinshaw, Carolyn, 159, 171, 172, 236 Doane, Nick, 73, 90, 244 Dold, Alban, 30, 236 Dubois, Marie-Marguerite, xv, xvii, 171, 236 Duby, Georges, 207, 223, 236 Eadburga, St., 71 Eadgisl, priest, 104 Eadwine, scribe, 127 Ecgfrith, son of Offa of Mercia, 146 Eco, Umberto, 12, 207, 222, 237 The Island of the Day Before, 17 The Name of the Rose, 153 Edward II, 122 Edward III, 169 Eliason, Norman, 84, 92, 227 Elsholz, Jean-Marc, 11, 205, 252 Elucidation, The, 210, 223 Emare, 176, 182–5 Emma, queen consort of England, 144, 154 see also Encomium Emmae Reginae Encomium Emmae Reginae, 144 engraving, 116, 118, 120, 124, 126, 127, 129–31 enhancement, digital (image) ethics of enhancement, 35, 53–6 Eomer, son of Offa the Angle, 142 erasure(s), erasing fear of, 4, 6, 119, 131–2 figurative, 10–11, 166, 157, 160–1, 168 left blank, 82, 115–16 methods of, 1, 4–5, 14n20, 36, 82, 116, 125–6 reasons for, 6, 22, 29, 71, 82 correction/alteration, 36, 84–6, 96, 98, 119 defacement/destruction, 30n11, 115–16, 126 recovery of, 5, 35, 37–56

Tatjana Silec

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262

IN DEX

erasure(s), erasing—Continued and reinscription, 1, 6, 8, 10, 57n6, 76n36, 82–6, 96, 98, 168 types of text subject to, 6, 22, 36, 82, 119 Eriugena, John Scotus, 218 The Erle of Tolous, 176, 182–5 An Exhortation to Christian Living, 87 Ferlampin-Acher, Christine, 214, 225, 237 Field, Rosalind, 175, 183, 237 Fleury (Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire), abbey, 23, 30–2, 234, 236, 238, 239, 242, 244, 246, 249, 256, 258 Forthere, bishop, 107 Foucault, Michel, 222, 237 Fouquet, Jean, 128 Frère Denis, 30, 31, 32, 235 Fulda, abbey, 22 Fursa, St., 105, 106 Galpin, Richard, 83, 91, 237 Gameson, Richard, 14, 98, 109–11, 237 Gance, Abel, 206, 215, 221, 222, 225, 238, 240 Gauzlin, abbot, 23, 24 Gawain poet, 182 Genette, Gérard Palimpsests, 3, 13, 89, 94, 176, 238 genre, literary, 9, 139–43, 148–52, 153, 175–91 Derridean analysis of, 9–10 see also under romance Germanus, abbot, 23 Gildas, 95, 109 Gilte Legende, 119, 129, 256 Glanvill, 158, 229 Glastonbury, 71 gloss, glossator, 7, 61–79, 126 Gneuss, Helmut, 28, 33, 58, 75, 82, 109, 110, 238 Godden, Malcolm, 7, 11, 15, 17, 88, 92, 94, 152, 227, 237, 238

Gottfried von Strassburg Tristan, 189 Gower, John, 236 Confessio Amantis, 172 “Tale of Tereus,” 170 graffito, graffiti, 130, 131, 135, 244 Grail quest, 12, 205, 210, 215 Gregory of Tours, 144 Historia Francorum, 144 Gregory the Great, 22, 101, 110, 127, 246 Libellus Responsionum, 97 Pastoral Care, 101 Gretsch, Mechthild, 62, 74, 75, 78, 239 Grosseteste, Robert, 206–7, 209, 221–3, 229, 243, 249 Gryson, Roger, 14, 30, 228, 239 Guthrum, king of East Anglia, 146 Harris, Joseph, 139, 152, 153, 239 Heardred, 144 Hebrew Bible, 85, 125, 134, 229 Hemming, scribe, 97–9 Hengest, 142, 154, 248 Herculaneum papyri, 35 Heures d’Étienne Chevalier, Les, 128, 256 Hexateuch, see under Hebrew Bible histogram, xiii, 40–4 Hoccleve, 129 Hrothgar, (semi-legendary) king of Denmark, 141, 144, 147, 149 Hygd, (semi-legendary) queen of Geatland, 141 Hygelac, (semi-legendary) king of Geatland, 141, 144, 147, 149, 154 hypertext, 13n5, 89, 176 Il Filocolo, 176 Illich, Ivan, 13 infrared, see under light ink, 8, 36–8, 45, 48, 63, 118, 126–30 black, brown, 63, 79n62, 116, 128, 131 Christ’s blood, 129–30 green ink, 68 ink horn, 4–5

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IN DEX

iron-gall ink, 36 red ink, 36, 61, 63, 67–8, 98, 116, 130–1 see also under writing implements & materials inscription, see under engraving and writing Institut de France, xi Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes (IRHT), 26, 27, 32 intertextuality/transtextuality, 2, 3, 9, 13n5, 89 Irvine, Martin, 102, 112, 240 Jager, Eric, 13, 135, 240 James, Henry, 181 Jean de Meun The Romance of the Rose, 211, 223, 226, 229 Jerome, St., 82, 101, 126 John of Salisbury The Metalogicon, 15, 229 Jost, Karl, 87, 93, 240 Kendrick, Laura, 14, 240 Ker, Neil, 36, 240 Kiernan, Kevin, 82, 83, 91, 142, 155, 240, 243 Klaeber, Frederick, 102, 111, 112, 144, 152, 154, 229, 240 Ladies of the Fraternity of Saint George, 173, 238 Lambeth Palace Library, xiii, 69, 75, 252, 255, 257 Langland, William Piers Plowman, 124, 133, 230 Lapidge, Michael, 15, 152, 155, 237, 239, 241 Lara-Rallo, Carmen, 13, 241 Laurentius Surius, 16 law(s) Anglo-Saxon, 171n19 early Kentish, 69, 77n45 English Common Law, 163 erased, obsolescent, 82

263

of “metallognomy,” 208, 212 of refraction, 207 Roman, 159 Statutes of Westminster I & II, 158 see also under Glanvill and tables of the (Mosaic) law layer(s) in textual recovery techniques, 48–50 of writing, see under writing Lay of Graelent, The, 175 Lay of the Coast, The (Strandar Lioth), 189 Leclercq, Jean, Dom, 14, 241 Leerssen, Joep, 148, 150, 155, 241 Le Goff, Jacques, 214, 224, 225, 233, 241 Leiden riddle, 24, 32, 244, 256 Leofnoth, scribe, 24, 32, 249 Levi-Strauss, Claude, 157–8, 170, 241 Leyerle, John, 81, 90, 241 libri inutiles, 22, 30, 244 Life of Adam and Eve, 119, 133, 254 Life of St. Alexis, 26 Life of St. Gertrude, 82 Life of St. Nicholas, 26 light cinematographic, 216, 220 infrared, 26 intelligible, 210–11, 213–9, 222n12 medieval theory/theology of, 205–7, 209, 211, 213, 219 ultraviolet, 26, 27, 91n11 wavelengths, 38–9 see also under color Lollard, 116 Lowe, E.-A., 22, 24, 26, 28, 29, 30, 36, 91, 242 Codices Latini Antiquiores, 32, 57, 74 Codices Rescripti, 30, 32, 57, 82, 83, 90 Luxeuil, abbey, 22, 32 Lydgate, John, 129 The Life of Our Lady, 124, 230 Reson and Sensuallyte, 133, 230 Temple of Glas, 118, 132, 230 Troy-Book, 123, 133, 230

Tatjana Silec

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264

IN DEX

Machaut, Guillaume de, 127 Le Remède de Fortune, 127 Machutus (Malo), St., 71 Magna Carta, 122 Malory, Thomas, Sir, 183, 214, 254 Le Morte Darthur, 11, 151, 153, 217, 218, 224, 230 Manuscripts, see Index of Manuscripts Cited, 225–8 Marie de France, 10, 16, 175, 176, 179–80, 188, 190, 230, 243, 247; see also under Breton lay (or lai) Lai de Guigemar, 180, 190 Lai de Lanval, 10, 16, 176, 180–1, 184–6, 188, 190–4, 196, 198, 201, 203, 204, 243, 247 Lai du Chèvrefeuille, 189, 190 Lay le Freine (Le Fresne), 175–81, 184, 189, 190 Martin, Jean-Claude, xi, xiii Martin, Priscilla, 159, 160, 171, 172, 242 Master of Simon of St. Albans, 125 matière de Bretagne, 10, 205, 215 see also under Breton lay (or lai) and romance McKitterick, Rosamond, 21, 30, 242 Miller, Thomas, 97–9, 108, 109, 111, 113, 228, 230 Mitchell, Bruce, 69, 77, 242 Monte Cassino, abbey, 23 Mooney, Linne, 116, 132, 242 Mynors, R.A.B., 108, 109, 228 Napier, Arthur S., 87, 93, 94, 231, 247 Neoplatonism, 206–7, 213, 222 see also under Plotinus Nicholson, R.H., 178, 189, 190, 243 Nowlin, Steele, 187, 191, 243 Oda, archbishop, 23 Offa Continental Offa (also called Offa the Angle), 142, 143, 146 king of Mercia, 143, 145–7

O’Keeffe, Katherine O’Brien, 90, 91, 111 O’Neill, Patrick, 72, 75, 77, 79, 243 Ongentheow, (semi-legendary) king of Sweden, 142 optic, optical, optics, 38, 207, 210, 218 see also under color and light orality & oral transmission, 1, 93n32, 95–6, 101, 108–9, 117, 119, 128, 139, 142–3, 145, 147, 151, 153n7, 177, 181, 184, 189n8, 194, 203n5 Orosius, 82, 91, 95, 109, 232, 258 Osgar, abbot, 23 Oswald, bishop, 23 Oswald, king of Northumbria, St., 105 Ottar Vendel-Crow, also called Ohthere, 144 Ovid, 11 Heroides, 173, 230 Metamorphoses, 157, 160–2, 165–8, 170, 230 Ovide Moralisé, 11, 16, 170, 242 palimpsest(s) all writing as, 12, 73n1, 81 compositional, 87–9 literal compared to metaphorical, 2–4, 7, 95–6, 193 literal definition of, 2–4, 7, 21–3, 36, 82–3 literary representation of, 116 metaphorical understanding of, 2–4, 7, 132n1, 139, 157, 169, 175–7, 181–2, 203, 205 Panofsky, Erwin, 207, 210, 222, 223, 226, 244 Papahagi, Adrian, 6, 21–33, 57n4, 252 parchment, see under writing implements & materials Parkes, Malcolm, 24, 28, 32, 244 Partney, abbey, 96, 105 Paul the Deacon, 30 Pearl, 118, 132, 219–20, 221, 227, 235, 256

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IN DEX

265

pen, see under writing implements & materials Pepin the Short, 145 Percy, Thomas, bishop, 195, 203, 229 peritext, 181, 184 Les Petites Heures du Duc de Berry, 128, 255, 258 pixel, see under color Pliny, 95, 109 Plotinus, 206, 213–14, 222n10, 223n37, 230 Potter, Simeon, 97, 111, 244 The Prick of Conscience, 116 Prince, Gerald, 89, 94 Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, 206, 213, 222 De Caelesti Hierachia, 218 pugillar(es), writing tablet, 128, 129 Pulsiano, Phillip, 65, 73–7, 230, 244, 245 Pynkhurst, Adam, Chaucer’s scribe, 116

romance Arthurian/courtly, 10–11, 185, 193, 202, 205–6, 208, 214, 216–17, 220 see also under Breton lay (lai) and matière de Bretagne epic, 9, 139, 141, 148, 150 generic categorization, 9–11, 139–41, 153n7 and n11, 175–6, 178, 185, 188 see also under genre historical, 140–1, 153n9 and n10 Roman de Horn, 189 Rosenthal, Joel T., 13, 15, 239, 248, 249 Rouse, Richard H. and Mary A., 125, 133, 246 Rowley, Sharon M., 8, 15, 95–113, 153, 189, 246, 253 Rubin, Gayle, 158, 170, 246 rubric, rubrication, rubricator, 32n34, 36, 57n8, 68, 98–9, 127

quill, see under writing implements & materials

St. Erkenwald, 119, 132 St. Gall, see under Sankt Gallen St. Jacques, Raymond, 100, 101, 112, 247 St. Mary, Lydgate, Suffolk, xiii, 130, 131 St. Mary & St. Clement, Clavering, Essex, xiii, 130 St. Peter’s Basilica, 2 Sallust Historiae, 24 Samoyault, Tiphaine, 12, 247 Sankt Gallen, 5, 14, 22, 258 Sansonetti, Paul-Georges, 217, 225, 226, 247 Scott, Walter, Sir, 140–1, 148–9, 153 The Bride of Lammermoor, 141 Ivanhoe, 148, 150, 153 Waverley, 148–50, 153, 155 script, see under writing Scyld Scefing, legendary king, 147 Sigeric, archbishop, 85

Ramsey, abbey, 23, 24, 31, 75, 242 Rauschenberg, Robert, 83 Rædwald, king of East Anglia, 147, 149 reception, 3, 6, 9, 13n6, 88, 108–9, 110n17, 178, 190n24, 207 Regularis Concordia, 24 Reynolds, L.-D, 29, 245 Richard I the Lionheart, 148 Richard II, 169 Richard of Saint Victor, 211, 223, 230 Ricoeur, Paul, 103, 112, 245 Rimbaud, Arthur, 223 Illuminations, 210 Une Saison en Enfer, 224, 245 Roberts, Jane, 7, 15, 33, 61–79, 203, 233, 245, 252 Robinson, Fred C., 7, 16, 79, 103, 113, 245 Robyns, Clem, 103, 112, 246

Tatjana Silec

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266

IN DEX

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, 117–18, 132, 140, 173, 219, 226–8, 234, 254 Sir Gowther, 176, 181–3, 185 Sir Lambewell, 10, 193–204, 229, 247, 256 Sir Landavall (Sir Landevale, Sir Landeval), 10, 16, 175, 257 Sisam, Celia and Kenneth, 74, 76–9, 231 Solinus, 95, 109 Song of Solomon, 126 Stanton, Robert, 70, 78, 101, 102, 112, 247 Stévanovitch, Colette, 10–11, 173n44, 175, 193–204, 247, 253 Stevenson, Robert Louis Treasure Island, 140 Stokes, Peter A., 5, 12, 27, 33, 35, 57n7, 58n9, 78n59, 247, 253–4 Strandar Lioth, see Lay of the Coast, The Strohm, Paul, 16, 173, 176, 189, 190, 232, 248 stylus, see under writing implements & materials subtraction, electronic, 33, 232 Suger, abbot, 207, 210, 221, 222, 244 Sutton Hoo, 147, 155, 233 Sweet, Henry, 102, 112, 231 Szarmach, Paul E., 6–7, 13, 15, 57, 81–94, 111, 154, 232, 237, 239, 247–9, 254 tables of the (Mosaic) law, 125–6, 131 tablet(s) boxwood, 125 bronze, 125 clay, 117, 121–2 pugillar(es), 128, 129 round-topped, 125–8, 134, 242 stone, 4 wax, 4, 8, 115, 122, 124–32, 133, 246 see also under tables of the (Mosaic) law Tacitus Germania, 150–1

Theodulf of Orléans, bishop, 23, 31, 246 Theuderic I, king of Austrasia, 144 Thomas Aquinas, St., 210, 212, 224 Thomas of Saint Victor, 210 Thryth (Modthryth), king Offa’s wife, 146 Tolkien, J.R.R., 16n36, 139, 253 Finn and Hengest: the Fragment and the Episode, 154 “The Monsters and the Critics,” 150–2, 155, 248 Tremayne, Peter, 153 Trier, 36, 82, 127 Twain, Mark, 202 Uhlig, Claus, 12, 16, 17, 248 ultraviolet, see under light van Peer, Willie, 12, 132, 248 vermeil, see under color Vernon Paternoster, 128, 131, 135, 136, 229, 239, 255, 257 Vezin, Jean, 24, 28, 32, 249 Vial, Claire, 9–11, 175–91, 203n6, 254 Vignaux, Paul, 209, 223, 249 Virgil Eclogues, 130 Waite, Gregory, 102, 110–12, 249 Wallace-Hadrill, J.M., 112, 144, 145, 154, 249 wax tablet, see under tablet(s) Wealhtheow, legendary queen of the Danes, 144, 154 Wearmouth-Jarrow, abbey, 2 Whitbread, Leslie G., 82, 88, 90, 249 Whitby, synod of, 96 Whitelock, Dorothy, 31, 92, 93, 97, 99, 100, 110–12, 231, 240, 249, 250 Widsith, 95, 142, 154, 230 Wiesenekker, Evert, 70, 78, 249 Wilcox, Jonathan, 15, 249 Wilfrid, bishop, 96

Tatjana Silec

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IN DEX

William of Brailles (William de Brailles), illuminator, 125–6 Wilson, N.-G., 21, 29, 245 Winchcombe, abbey, 23, 75 Winchester, 31, 62, 71, 77, 78, 97, 190, 239, 243, 250 Winchester Bible, 125, 134, 236 Wolfram von Eschenbach Parzival, 206, 223, 225, 231 Worcester, 23, 62, 71, 87, 97 writing hierarchy of modes of, 127 layer(s) of, 2–3, 9, 10, 12, 61, 83, 86–9, 95–6, 99, 101, 125, 141, 169, 181, 187, 193, 203, 205, 221 lower (underwriting, scriptio inferior), 2, 5, 11, 22, 24, 26–9, 43, 45–9, 55, 82–3, 89–90n4, 98, 205, 216 rewriting/reinscription, 1–4, 6–11, 16n35, 22, 24, 28, 36, 57n4, 81, 83–4, 88–9, 95–6, 98, 99, 101–3, 108, 116, 131, 139, 146–7, 151, 157–8, 160, 165, 168–9, 172n29, 176, 181–2, 193–4, 197, 205, 221

267

upper (overwriting, scriptio superior), 2–3, 10–11, 22, 25–6, 28, 36, 43, 45–6, 82, 83, 89, 108 writing implements & materials, 4–5 paper, 125 parchment, membrane, vellum, 1, 3, 8, 13, 24, 25, 28, 29, 36, 37, 42–9, 81–2, 116, 118, 120, 122, 125, 127, 128, 130, 132, 193, 218, 226 pen, quill pen, 4, 132 ruler, ruled lines, ruling, 5, 26, 62–3, 65, 70, 127 stylus, 4, 15n25, 118, 124–8 wax, 125 see also under ink and tablet(s) Wulfstan of York, 6, 81, 85–9, 90, 92–4, 231, 238, 240, 247, 249, 256 De Falsis Dies, 88, 231 Institutes of Polity, 87, 231 Sermo Lupi, 86, 93, 231 Wycliffite Bible, 126, 134 York, 23 Zink, Michel, 217, 225, 250

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