This study argues that Anglo-Saxon scribes copied Old English verse to different standards of accuracy depending on the nature of the context in which they were working. Taking as its sample all metrically regular Old English poems known...
moreThis study argues that Anglo-Saxon scribes copied Old English verse to different standards of accuracy depending on the nature of the context in which they were working. Taking as its sample all metrically regular Old English poems known to have survived in more than one twelfth-century or earlier witness, it divides this corpus into three main contextual groups, each of which exhibits a characteristic pattern of substantive textual variation. Chapter Two examines “Glossing, Translating, and Occasional” poems. These texts are generally short, are found in primarily non-poetic contexts, and appear to have been transmitted independently of their surrounding context. They also all show a high level of substantive textual accuracy. At their most accurate, the scribes responsible for copying the surviving witnesses to these poems show themselves to have been able to reproduce their common texts with little or no variation in vocabulary, word order, or syntax – and preserve this accuracy even in the face of a corrupt common exemplar or thoroughgoing dialectal translation. The substantive variants the witnesses to these texts do show tend either to be obvious mistakes or to have a relatively insignificant effect on sense, syntax, and metre. Apparently significant inflectional differences more often than not can be attributed to graphic error, orthographic difference, or phonological change. Verbal substitutions are rare and almost invariably involve words which look alike and have similar meanings. Examples of the addition or omission of words and elements either destroy the sense of the passage in which they occur, or involve unstressed and syntactically unimportant sentence particles. Chapter Three looks at the poems preserved in “Fixed Contexts” – as constituents of larger vernacular prose framing texts such as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the Old English translation of the Pastoral Care, and the Old English translation of Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica. With the exception of a single, late witness to the Old English Historia, these poems are found in exactly the same contextual position in each surviving witness. The Battle of Brunanburh is always found in manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; the Metrical Preface to the Old English Pastoral Care survives only in manuscripts of Alfred’s translation. In contrast to the Glossing, Translating, and Occasional poems discussed in Chapter Two, the Fixed Context poems differ greatly in the amount and types of textual variation they exhibit. At their most conservative, the scribes of the surviving witnesses to these texts produce copies as accurate as the least variable Glossing, Translating, and Occasional poems; the scribes of other witnesses, however, show themselves to be far more willing to introduce substantive changes of vocabulary and inflection. In either case the amount and nature of the variation introduced is directly comparable to the substantive textual variation found in the surrounding prose. Scribes who show themselves to have been innovative copyists of the prose texts in which these poems are found, also invariably produce innovative copies of the poems themselves; scribes who produce conservative copies of the poetic texts, on the other hand, are responsible for the most conservative texts of the surrounding frame. The third standard of accuracy is exhibited by the “Anthologised and Excerpted” poems discussed in Chapter Four. These poems differ from the Glossing, Translating, and Occasional poems of Chapter Two and the Fixed Context poems of Chapter Three in both the nature of the contexts in which they are found and the amount and significance of the substantive variation they exhibit. Unlike the texts discussed in the preceding chapters, the Anthologised and Excerpted poems show evidence of the intelligent involvement of the persons first responsible for collecting or excerpting them in their surviving witnesses. Like the greater part of the corpus of Old English poetry as a whole – but unlike the poems discussed in Chapters Two and Three – these texts all survive with at least one witness in a compilation or anthology. In four out of the six cases, their common text shows signs of having been excerpted from, inserted into, or joined with other prose or verse texts in one or another witness. Where the variation exhibited by the poems discussed in Chapters Two and Three was to be explained only on the grounds of the personal interests, abilities, or difficulties of the scribes responsible for the tradition leading up to each of the surviving witnesses, that exhibited by the witnesses to the Anthologised and Excerpted poems frequently can be explained on contextual grounds – and often involves the introduction of metrically, lexically or syntactically coordinated variants at different places in the common text. This argument has some important implications for our understanding of the transmission of Old English poetry. In the first place, it suggests that there was no single style of Old English poetic transmission. Since Sisam first asked “Was the poetry accurately transmitted?” scholars examining variation in the transmission of Old English verse texts have tended to assume they were investigating a single phenomenon – that is to say, have assumed that, a few late, early, or otherwise exceptional examples aside, all Old English poems showed pretty much the same kinds of textual variation, whether this variation be the result of “error,” or the application of “oral” or “formulaic” ways of thinking. The evidence presented here, however, suggests that the scribes themselves worked far less deterministically. Rather than copying “the poetry” to any single standard of substantive accuracy, the scribes seem instead to have adjusted their standards to suit the demands of the context in which the specific poem they were copying was to appear. When the wording of their text was important – as it was when the poem was being copied as a gloss or translation – the scribes reproduced their exemplars more or less word-for-word. When the relationship between their text and its surrounding context was paramount – as it appears to have been in the case of the Anthologised and Excerpted poems – the evidence of the surviving witnesses suggests that the persons responsible for transmitting these texts were more willing to adjust sense, syntax, and metre. When other factors
