Late West Saxon Research Articles

Aaron J Kleist and Robert K Upchurch (eds). Ælfrician Homilies and Varia: Editions, Translations and Commentary, 2 vol

Aaron Kleist and Robert Upchurch have assembled a monumental tome that includes the Ælfrician homilies not already published in the major Ælfrician collections, which are The First Series (ed. Peter Clemoes), The Second Series (ed. Malcolm Godden), Supplemental Homilies (ed. John C. Pope), the Lives of Saints (eds Mary Clayton and Juliet Mullins), Homilies of Bodley 343 (ed. Susan Irvine), and the Hexameron (ed. Samuel Crawford). Nine of these homilies have never been published before; others are published but in hard-to-find and hard-to-access places like dissertations. Of the 31 texts published here, there are 15 distinct homilies, five related homilies printed as appendices, two alternative versions of a homily, and nine varia, that is, texts that are not homilies, but related to Ælfric’s homiletic work. Kleist and Upchurch have chosen the word ‘Ælfrician’ in their title carefully, as the authorship of many homilies has been and continues to be disputed. They explain, ‘Fifteen of the homilies are, or almost certainly are, by Ælfric. Four others might be. And in view of such certainties, near certainties, and clear uncertainties, we thus use “Ælfrician” in the title to characterize the works edited here’ (viii). (Notably to reach these numbers, they are counting the 15 distinct homilies, the five related homilies, and the two alternative versions, for 22 total homilies.) The editors are correct in this choice: even in homilies where Ælfric’s sole authorship is disputed, it is still useful to print these homilies together in order to see the connections between different texts, some of which are certainly authored by Ælfric. It is also particularly helpful for anyone interested in the construction of composite homilies, as Ælfric frequently rewrites and reuses his own material. Equally, the editors print the homilies in the versions that exist in the best manuscript without correcting the text to Ælfric’s Late West Saxon. Therefore, the current state of homilies like I.2 (In Natali Domini) offers an important lens into the continuing use of English-language homilies in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

The Old English Pronoun þæge: An Addendum to Michiko Ogura, ‘Late West Saxon Forms of the Demonstrative Pronouns as Native Prototypes of They’

The Old English Pronoun <i>þæge</i>: An Addendum to Michiko Ogura, ‘Late West Saxon Forms of the Demonstrative Pronouns as Native Prototypes of <i>They</i>’

Verbal Negative Contraction in Four Most Complete Witnesses to the Old English Bede

ABSTRACT The witnesses to the Old English Bede (OEB) should theoretically provide an excellent illustration of the generalization that while contracted negated verbs predominate in Old English prose, uncontracted are not infrequent in Anglian but almost exceptional in late West Saxon (Hogg and Fulk 2011; Levin 1958). This rule predicts that the uncontracted forms would be prevalent in the earlier copies T and O that preserve more Anglian features and rare in later and more thoroughly West-Saxonized B and Ca. However, this expectation is not sustained. Whereas B exhibits the highest proportion of the contracted forms among the OEB manuscripts, its rate of 41% is significantly lower than 96% of the Old English Gospels and 99% of Ælfric’s material (Levin 1958). To identify the factors apart from dialect that affect the distribution of the contracted and uncontracted forms in the OEB, the present article analyzes all instances of the negated verbs beon/wesan ‘be’, habban ‘have’, willan ‘will’, and witan ‘know’ in four most complete manuscripts. It demonstrates that negative contraction in the OEB is conditioned by morphology, syntax, scribal stylistic preferences, genre, translation technique, and possibly the growing impact of the West-Saxon and lingering prestige of the Mercian tradition.

Synonyms and Lexical Substitutions in Texts of the Old English Life of Saint Mary of Egypt

ABSTRACT Among the unusually high number of variants in the three surviving texts of the Old English Life of Saint Mary of Egypt are many instances in which a scribe has changed an inherited reading by substituting one word for another. Many of the substitutions are the result of error or unconscious scribal preference but this article demonstrates that all three texts of the Old English Life, which is of likely Anglian origin, also reveal a pattern of deliberate rewording. This rewording arises from a desire to regularise and “improve” the language of the Life, bringing it more into line with the norms of Late West Saxon, the literary language generally in use in the period when our scribes were at work. No such pattern of substitution is evident in other hagiographical texts in the same manuscripts. The Life of Saint Mary of Egypt was clearly viewed by compilers of late Anglo-Saxon hagiographical manuscripts as a work worthy of inclusion but, unlike other lives, as one in need of some linguistic revision to make it fit in with accepted literary standards.

Irregularity of the 'ie' spellings in West Saxon English: Remarks on variation in third-person pronouns

Orthographic consistency was rarely maintained in most Old English varieties, because the language system was relatively new and spelling norms took time to develop.While full standardisation is never expected in Old English, the understanding of factors underlying patterns of regularity and irregularity are paramount for a full grasp of issues pertaining to authorship, textuality and other linguistic and non-linguistic levels of analysis. These notes explore spelling irregularity in material from West Saxon dialects, bringing comparative examples of variation in spelling between early West Saxon (eWS) &lt;ie&gt; and late West Saxon (lWS) &lt;y&gt;. West Saxon generally stands up for its emphasis on some degree of orthographic standardisation and yet appears to display interesting patterns of variation. The focus of my notes will be on particular instances of spelling inconsistencies, with special attention to a specific category of words where &lt;ie&gt; appears to vary more frequently, namely third-person pronouns. For my exploratory analysis, various witnesses of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (i.e. examples of eWS and lWS texts) were compared. The data was collected from different sections of an orthography-friendly edition of four different manuscripts, MSA (Bately 1986), MSB (Taylor 1983), MSC (O’Brien O’Keefe 2001) and MSD (Cubbin 1996), and compared with digital copies of the original manuscripts. The latter part of these notes points to some of the factors which could explain the features detected, with an exhortation for future researchers to build on some of the ideas proposed and explore new territory.Keywords: Old English; spelling; pronouns; variation; early West Saxon; late West Saxon

Negators in Contrastive Constructions in Old English

ABSTRACTThe purpose of this article is to find out the factors that explain the variation among the different negators in contrastive constructions, X (and) not Y and not X but Y, in Old English prose and glosses. An attempt is also made to answer the question why such structures are used, and why they are more common in some texts than in others. The data consists of a select corpus. The results indicate that in early West Saxon the negators in such constructions are mainly nalles and næs, while the negator na occurs less frequently. The exclusive use of the negator na by Ælfric simplifies the system of negators in late West Saxon. Contrastive constructions are mainly employed as rhetorical means for emphasis. They are favoured in texts that are intended to influence people. The results suggest that the variation is partly idiolectal and genre-based, and partly diachronic.

Alternation vs. variation in Old English

This paper addresses the phenomena of variation and alternation as reflected by the Old English version of De Temporibus Anni (Blake 2009).The analysis, which focuses on the stem vowels of verbs and is based on the diatopic and diachronic contrasts found by de la Cruz (1986) as well as the alternations identified by Kastovsky (1968), aims at deciding if a given equivalence is a product of variation or alternation. The results obtained reveal that alternation is a more predictable and systematic phenomenon than variation. The conclusions stress the importance of the diphthong /ie/ for discerning between Early and Late West-Saxon and as a point of contact between the phenomena of i-mutation, alternation and diachronic variation.

Dialect and Word Choice in Old English: Two Case Studies with Old English Perception Verbs

This article examines the textual distribution of two sets of Old English verbs, hrepian versus hrīnan (‘to touch’), and frēdan versus fēlan (‘to feel’). In both pairs, their etymologies reveal cognates that are widely distributed in Germanic languages, and their range of meanings in Old English show a close synonymy, suggesting that they fulfilled similar semantic needs within larger semantic fields. However, while their distribution in Late West Saxon texts and elsewhere seem to conform to a Winchester (or Ælfrician) vs. non-Winchester pattern, the presence of frēdan in Early West Saxon is a marked variation from the norm. The article thus suggests that the distribution of these verb pairs reflects genuine dialectal variation (rather than deliberately selected linguistic forms), thereby giving evidence of speech divisions that vary from traditionally recognized dialectal areas. The behavior of these verbs may also illustrate the need for a more nuanced description of the nature of the ‘Winchester vocabulary’.

Ælfric’s Linguistic and Stylistic Alterations in his Adaptations from the Old English Boethius

AElfric’s Nativitas Domini and De Auguriis, which are included in his Lives of Saints collection, are partly adapted from the Old English prose translation of Boethius’s De consolatione Philosophiae. This article examines linguistic features and stylistic qualities of AElfric’s adaptations with special reference to his modification and improvements of the Old English Boethius. AElfric transposes prose written in early Old English into prose of the Late West Saxon standard in terms of lexicon, morphology and syntax. He also makes alterations in order to fit his original to his alliterative style. Furthermore, he effectively exploits formal stylistic devices, creating parallelism and introducing chiasmus and simile. On the other hand, he deletes redundancy found in the Old English Boethius. It is concluded that AElfric produced prose in highly sophisticated style, which surpasses the precedent.

The roles of phonology and analogy In Old English high vowel deletion

AbstractThe problem under consideration is the exact nature of the application of High Vowel Deletion (HVD) in Old English. As discussed in §1, according to what has come to be the most prevalent view, a form such as nom.acc.pl. hēafdu‘heads’ in Late West Saxon, from earlier *hēafudu, is the phonologically regular result of the application of HVD. In §2 a recent alternative explanation is discussed, whereby *hēafudu should have produced *hēafd, which was subsequently reformed to hēafdu in West Saxon on the basis of analogy. Some initial difficulties that confront this latter explanation are discussed. The earlier analysis of Eduard Sievers maintains that neither of these analyses is correct, and that hēafudu, one of the forms actually attested in early texts, including the Vespasian Psalter, represents the purely phonological result of HVD, which applies vacuously to this form. Evidence is adduced in §3 demonstrating that the treatment of the phonological results of HVD in interrelated declensional categories in the dialect of the Vespasian Psalter are preserved with impressive conservatism, evincing little or no analogical disruption. This conclusion lends strong support to Sievers’ analysis of forms like hēafudu and renders it extremely improbable that West Saxon hēafdu can be anything but an analogical creation or that the proposed *hēafd could ever have existed. In §4 a rationale is offered for the changes, analogical or otherwise, that must be assumed for West Saxon in forms like hēafdu, as well as in ja‐stem neuter nouns with plurals like rīċu, wītu, along with feminine nouns in Germanic *‐iþō, such as and .

A reconsideration of Wulfstan's use of Norse-derived terms: The case of Þr I

It is a well-known feature of the language of Archbishop Wulfstan II of York (d. 1023) that, despite exhibiting the characteristics of the late West Saxon dialect, it contains a large proportion of...

LATE WEST SAXON FORMS OF THE LATE WEST SAXON FORMS OF THE NATIVE PROTOTYPES OF THEY

Journal Article LATE WEST SAXON FORMS OF THE LATE WEST SAXON FORMS OF THE NATIVE PROTOTYPES OF THEY Get access MICHIKO OGURA MICHIKO OGURA Chiba University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume 48, Issue 1, March 2001, Pages 5–6, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/48-1-5 Published: 01 March 2001

On the use of negative na and ne in the Regius Psalter

An introductory Old English grammar says that ne is a negative adverb when it precedes a finite verb but a conjunction when it occurs elsewhere. The negative adverb na generally precedes an element other than a verb. In this paper I pick out Old English glosses which correspond to the 'Latin negative + verb' construction in the thirteen Psalter versions (PsG1A to M) and try to show how often the Regius Psalter (PsG1D) uses the 'na + (Pron +) V' construction in contrast with the preference for the '(Pron +) ne + V' construction found in the Vespasian Pssalter (PsG1A) and even in the D-type Stowe Psalter (PsG1F) and Vitellius Psalter (PsG1G). My investigation will show not only the peculiarity of PsG1D but the morphological confusion of na and ne – which reflects the phonological indistinctness and leads to structural variety – in late West Saxon Psalter glosses.

The Devil's Rights and the Redemption in the Literature of Mediaeval England (review)

216 Reviews Accordingly, a large part of the 80-page Introduction is devoted to contextualising the prefaces, providing historical background and so forth. It is followed by a substantial bibliography of works mentioned in the Introduction. The explanatory notes, largely devoted to identifying figures named in the texts or scriptural passages, seem pitched at an audience beginning medieval studies. Each text is presented uncluttered by the apparatus usually ignored by students grappling with the basics of comprehension, and the emendations and transcriptional minutiae are removed to a section of textual notes at the end. One might expect, therefore, more in the way of aids to translation, either in a section on language in the introduction, or in the notes. As in Magennis's edition, the glossary is comprehensive, and parses the individual forms and occurrences of words. The book, however, lacks the kind of syntactic notes and other language material that Magennis provides. In examining one of the more orthographically difficult texts, the Preface to the Letter to Sigeferth (8d), which survives in the mid-twelfth-century manuscript Cotton Vespasian D.xiv, I found that the glossary's general comprehensiveness and accuracy failed. The spelling form emb is not cross-referenced to or listed under ymb; nor main to mann. Healden does not appear under the entry for healdan. There is no entry for the verb semen. Gewriten in the phrase on /Engliscen gewriten does not appear under gewrit, nor is the irregularity of inflexion discussed. Most texts, fortunately, are preserved in more regular late West Saxon form. This book proves a useful tool for introducing students to iElfric, his works and the culture of the reformed monasteries, but the teacher may find it necessary to provide further aids to translating the texts it contains. Greg Waite Department of English University of Otago Marx, C. W., The Devil's Rights and the Redemption in the Literature of Mediaeval England, Cambridge, D. S. Brewer, 1995; cloth; pp. x, 184; 4 illustrations; R.R.P. £29.50, US$51.00. The notion of the traditional rights over mankind held by the Devil is a theological concept much used in the (surviving) medieval literature produced in England. Necessarily it needs to be considered closely in the appraisal of these various formulations concerned with the redemption. There Reviews 217 has been a tendency to regard its presence in these texts as anachronistic, an inheritance from patristic writing. Marx's study is concerned to detect the persisting influence of such theological arguments and concepts in literary texts. The selected topics are treated sequentially and in considerable detail: the twelfth-century controversy and its origins; commentaries on and encyclopaedic texts treating of this matter; the Gospel of Nicodemus; Grosseteste's Chasteau d'Amour; various instructional writings; and various more or less familiar mystery plays. The Sentences of Peter Lombard (c. 1100-60), one of the most widely used textbooks of theology in the twelfth century, followed on from the Augustinian formulation that the Devil was responsible for the death of Christ, and that God was just in freeing humanity from the Devil who had abused his given power. Christ's death, then, meant the forgiveness of human sins and so the reconciliation of man with God. As in De Trinitate, the language of ransom—redemptio and pretium—recalled for early historians the 'ransom theory' which had been used by such Greek theological writers as Origen and Gregory of Nyssa. But the Devil's inability to understand the true nature of Christ meant his inevitable defeat. Yet it seems that Augustine's statements 'imply that God chose to respect some element of right in the Devil's possession of humanity which was over and above that power which depended upon humanity's state of sin' (p. 15). This power seems to have givenriseto the notion of iura diaboli. In this formulation and its derivatives, the Devil is conceived as a figure within a controlled model of society—a servant of the king, a jailer, and a law-breaker to be treated like any other such. In the second chapter Marx turns to biblical commentaries, to the Glossa Ordinaria, Aquinas and the commentaries of Hugh of St. Cher...

Spellings of the waldend group – again

The bulk of Old English literature, both poetry and prose, has come down to us in manuscripts of the late tenth and early eleventh centuries. Most of the texts in these late manuscripts are written in a form of Old English called late West Saxon. This dialect was used not only by West Saxon scribes and authors of that period but also by their contemporaries from other dialect areas, and the scribes employed it even when they were copying much earlier Old English texts, such as the early West Saxon Alfredian prose texts or the early Anglian glosses in the Vespasian Psalter. Late West Saxon thus cannot be looked upon as a regionally restricted dialect but – with certain reservations – as a written standard current in all of late Anglo-Saxon England.

Æthelwold's translation of theRegula Sancti Benedictiand its Latin exemplar

St Benedict wrote his Rule for monastic communities in the first half of the sixth century. It must have reached England in the course of the seventh century and was translated into Old English prose by Æthelwold, bishop of Winchester, in about 970 at the request of King Edgar and Qeen Ælfthryth. Æhelwold was one of the leaders of the tenth-century Benedictine reform in England and his translation of the Rule is among his major contributions to the reform movement. Moreover the Old English Rule holds a key position in the history of the development of Old English language and literature. Manuscripts of the text must have been numerous from the tenth century to the twelfth century and even the thirteenth. Scholars like William of Malmesbury, Lawrence Nowell, John Jocelyn and Francis Junius took an interest in the Old English Rule, but, except for a chapter printed from BM Cotton Faustina A.x by Thomas Wright in 1842, the text was not easily accessible until Arnold Schröer published his edition in 1885, followed in 1888 by his introduction discussing date and authorship, the relationship between the manuscripts and some linguistic points. Comparatively little work seems to have been done on the Old English Rule since then except for Rohr's Bonn Dissertation of 1912 and Professor Gneuss's supplement to the 1964 reprint of Schröer's edition. Rohr, in an investigation of the phonology and the inflexional morphology of the manuscripts of the Old English Rule, was able to show that the language of all of them is basically late West Saxon, while Gneuss gave a survey of what is known about the Old English Rule and the Latin Rule in Anglo-Saxon England; he also pointed out the difficulties involved in an attempt to identify or reconstruct the Latin exemplar which Æthelwold used. In this article I shall consider four topics which seem to me essential for our understanding of the Old English Rule: the question of Æthelwold's exemplar; the relationship between the manuscripts of the Old English Rule; Æthelwold's aims and techniques in his translation; and the vocabulary of the Old English Rule, with special reference to recent research in Old English word geography.

The origin of Standard Old English and Æthelwold's school at Winchester

‘In literary culture’, Sir James Murray has said, ‘the Normans were about as far behind the people whom they conquered as the Romans were when they made themselves masters of Greece.’ Indeed when the Normans set foot on English soil Anglo-Saxon England was in possession not only of a remarkable literature but also of a highly developed written standard language, known and used in all regions of the country. Most of our Old English manuscripts were written in the late tenth century and in the eleventh in a form of English – although not always quite pure – which the grammarians call late West Saxon. This form of the language is by no means just a dialect, any more than its literature is merely the literary product of a dialect. This fact is first brought home to us when we examine the negative evidence – the rareness before the end of the tenth century of texts in dialects other than West Saxon and their almost complete absence after this time, a state of affairs for which various explanations might be found, historical factors among others. Considerably more important, however, is a positive criterion: texts in this late West Saxon were written and read in other parts of the country too, in Kent (Canterbury), in Mercia (Worcester) and indeed even in Northumbria (York). Moreover, texts which had originally been written in Anglian were transcribed into late West Saxon, as was a large part of Old English poetry. There can be no doubt: in our Old English texts of the eleventh century we are dealing with a standard literary language which, although based on a dialectal foundation, had extended its domain beyond the borders of this dialect.

Descriptive Analysis of Discourse in Late West Saxon Texts

Descriptive Analysis of Discourse in Late West Saxon Texts

Notes on the Vocalism of Late West Saxon

Notes on the Vocalism of Late West Saxon