Manuscript Evidence Research Articles

William Walton’s Film Scores: New Evidence in the Autograph Manuscripts

William Walton’s manuscripts are generally well-preserved and well-documented. Autograph material survives for half of his fourteen feature film projects. These sources offer a rare glimpse behind the scenes into the production of mid-century British cinema—in particular allowing a more nuanced understanding of the film editing decisions made by Walton’s great collaborator Laurence Olivier, and the post-production role of conductor Muir Mathieson. Sketches reveal Walton’s early attempts to synchronize his music to action on screen, and later giving up this technique. Most surprisingly, the autographs reveal that the recent DVD release of Battle of Britain which purportedly restores the discarded Walton score (actually written jointly with Malcolm Arnold) misplaces every cue.

III. Poitevine Collections: Looking Behind the Manuscript Evidence

Article III. Poitevine Collections: Looking Behind the Manuscript Evidence was published on August 1, 2011 in the journal Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte: Kanonistische Abteilung (volume 97, issue 1).

ABOUT ALL: STUDIES IN Nineteenth-Century AMERICAN ENGLISH I

This article argues that American English before the twentieth century has been significantly under-documented, even in works like the Dictionary of American English, because of the inaccessibility of manuscript evidence, specifically from personal correspondence. It outlines a recently initiated project, the Corpus of American Civil War Letters (CACWL), which provides such evidence from the letters and diaries of little-educated soldiers in the conflict and their family members on the home front. In examining two compounds involving all (the pronoun you all ‘you (plural)’ and the preposition all to ‘except for’), the article demonstrates the usefulness of a large body of manuscripts to establish the general currency of the first form in the American South by 1860 and to identify the first known usages of the second form in American English. This initial case study confirms the value of both CACWL and the Southern Plantation overseers Corpus for both lexicography and for documenting the history of the English language.

Book Review: Astrology in Medieval Ireland and Wales: Fiery Shapes: Celestial Portents and Astrology in Ireland and Wales 700–1700

ASTROLOGY IN MEDIEVAL IRELAND AND WALES Fiery Shapes: Celestial Portents and Astrology in Ireland and Wales 700-1 700. Mark Williams (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2010). Pp. 218. £60. ISBN 978-0-19-957184-0.The literature on the history of astrology continues to expand, even if slowly, following Otto Neugebauer's rejection sixty years ago of George Sarton's query as to why any serious scholar would wish to study the past of this wretched subject. The body of reliable literature, though, remains slight (Sartonesque attitudes have proved remarkable tenacious), which is all the more reason to greet Mark Williams's exploration of astrology in what is commonly known as the British 'Celtic fringe' (specifically, Ireland and Wales) in the millennium between the early medieval period and the early modern - approximately 700 to 1700. The earlier date is determined by the beginning of manuscript evidence, the latter by the end of astrology's status as a fit topic for intelligent discourse. The only previous work in this area, Marina Smyth's Understanding the universe in seventh-century Ireland (Boydell Press, 1996), covers only the earlier period, so Williams's book is to be welcomed.The book is divided into several distinct sections, each of which could be considered as a smaller self-contained unit. The five chapters consider celestial portents and apocalypticism in early medieval Ireland; Druidic cloud-divination and portents of Antichrist; the two great literary works, the Welsh Taliesin and the History of Geoffrey of Monmouth; astrology in medieval manuscripts, chiefly from the fifteenth century; and the work of the seventeenth-century Calvinist astrologer, Morgan Llwyd. The narrative connecting the earliest chapter, a discussion of evidence for the existence of Druidic astrology in Ireland, to the latest, is tenuous. In this, the book reflects the difficulties of Williams's material, in that, having taken Celtic astrology as his subject area, the ground vanishes before his eyes. This, of course, is a familiar problem amongst Celtic scholars, some of whom have questioned the entire notion of 'Celtic' as a suitable category. Williams avoids this pitfall by defining his work regionally instead of culturally, not as Celtic astrology but as astrology in Wales and Ireland.In spite of the apparent disjunction between the Irish and Welsh material, Williams finds at least one major linking theme: a focus on astrology as the interpretation of celestial portents, a rationale amply justified by the Star of Bethlehem, rather than as, say, the interplay of natural forces which is favoured within Aristotelian cosmology. …

The Gyffard Partbooks, 1 and 2 (review)

A SIGNIFICANT SOURCE OF ENGLISH POLYPHONY The Gyffard Partbooks, 1 and 2. Transcribed and edited by David Mateer. 2 vols. (Early English Church Music, 48, 51.) London: Published for British Academy by Stainer and Bell, 2007-9. [Vol. 1: Foreword, p. [v]; contents, p. [vii-viii]; introd., p. ix-xv; score (with crit. notes preceding each work), p. 1-314. Vol. 2: Foreword, p. [v]; acknowledgements, p. [vi]; contents, p. [vi-vii]; introd., p. ix-xv; score (with crit. notes preceding each work), p. 1-256. ISMN M-2202-2160-6, ISBN 978-0-85249-892-7 (vol. 1); ISMN M-979-0-2202-2234-4 [sic], ISBN 978-0-85249-910-8 (vol. 2). £70 each vol.] One of most important sources of Tudor music, Gyffard partbooks (British Library Add. Mss. 17802-5) contain, as editor David Mateer describes (1:ix), broad and representative selection of sacred Latin polyphony produced in England just before Reformation. Given editorial decision to omit from these two volumes those works from Gyffard partbooks that have already appeared in composer-based volumes of Early English Church Music (EECM)-everything by Taverner and Tye, for example-the present edition might perhaps be more accurately described as selections from Gyffard partbooks. The decision to reproduce remainder of works in manuscript order is an excellent one that stays close to source itself. Noting where works previously published in EECM volumes would appear in a complete, continuous edition of partbooks would be a welcome inclusion, however, if only in table of contents. This would allow readers a complete overview of content and organization of source, which one would assume is reason for presenting editions in manuscript order. Mateer's introductory essay dates manuscripts to relatively late window of the 1570s and early 1580s (1:x). By relying heavily on watermarks, biographical evidence, and ownership of manuscripts, he dispels common misconceptions and flawed theories that date sources to 1550s, and offers more recent dates as a convincing alternative. In tracing Gyffard partbooks' provenance and ownership, Mateer offers an engaging narrative that also draws reader into a world of political intrigue in both government and academy. He begins by disputing early attributions of partbooks' ownership to a certain Dr. Philip Gyffard, asserting that this incorporeal figure (1:x) was a conjuration of misinterpreted evidence. Instead, a flesh-and-blood Dr. Roger Gifford (ca. 1536-1597) is identified as likely owner of partbooks, and his biography fills bulk of introduction. Mateer compares Gifford's biography to repertoire contained in each layer of partbooks, linking Gifford's time in Oxford to earliest layer of manuscripts. The second layer contains many works by composers working in or connected to London; Gifford was appointed one of Censors of Royal College of Physicians there in 1570. Mateer successfully links repertoire of final layer to social circles in which Gifford traveled, in spite of challenges presented by large number of anonymous works. The scribes of Gyffard partbooks cannot yet be identified conclusively, but editor suggests that Roger Gifford was not one of them (though he likely instructed them on what repertoire to copy), pointing to Latin mistakes that learned doctor would certainly not have made. He identifies two scribes, second of whom likely began work on partbooks much later than first. The discussion that follows details qualities of both hands and role each scribe played in text underlay, music copying, and other responsibilities. Taken as a whole, introduction provides a compact overview of Gyffard partbooks and their contents, as well as a persuasive argument for rethinking dating, provenance, and ownership of manuscripts. …

Anglicising Romance: Tail-Rhyme and Genre in Medieval English Literature (review)

Reviewed by: Anglicising Romance: Tail-Rhyme and Genre in Medieval English Literature Rosalind Field Rhiannon Purdie , Anglicising Romance: Tail-Rhyme and Genre in Medieval English Literature. Studies in Medieval Romance. Woodbridge, Suffolk: D.S. Brewer, 2008. Pp. ix + 272, 6 plates. ISBN: 978-1-8438-4162-3. $95.00. The Middle English tail-rhyme romances have long been regarded as a problem, an awkward regional response to the genre, patronized for their metrical clumsiness and derivative narratives. Rhiannon Purdie's previous work as editor of the Ipomadon equips her to provide the authoritative study that should once and for all re-orientate them as a focus of intelligent and important questions. In order to examine the origins and literary associations of tail-rhyme, Purdie takes the enquiry back across two centuries and into the tri-lingual culture of medieval England, arguing that while tail-rhyme may originate in Latin hymns and Victorine sequences, its use for narrative is a feature of insular literature, both Anglo-Norman and Middle English. There are earlier traditions of tail-rhyme for pious literature— hymns, sermons, hagiography—in Anglo-Norman and Middle English and the indication is that romance writers adopted tail-rhyme stanzas for their association with piety and moral seriousness. There is also a significant association with figures of English history and sanctity in texts that have direct influence on Middle English romances of English heroes, as in the case of the Vie de Thomas Becket and Bevis of Hampton. A thorough analysis demonstrates the variety of meter and stanza form to be found in the tail-rhyme corpus, one which is throughout the period recognized as distinctive, irrespective of genre (as the grouping of poems in the Vernon MS indicates). This is further illustrated by an account of what Purdie dubs 'graphic tail-rhyme,' an 'unusual, inconvenient and instantly recognisable' manuscript lay-out used by English scribes to display Anglo-Norman and Middle English tail-rhyme poetry. The use of graphic tail-rhyme in numerous manuscripts of Sir Thopas shows Chaucer deliberately using this manuscript convention to deepen his parody of the experience of reading romances—even the bob lines work as a visual joke. The pre-history of Middle English tail-rhyme has been largely invisible to readers of the romances but establishes a firm basis for a review of the Auchinleck manuscript in which tail-rhyme romances make their first appearance, accompanied by several non-romance texts in the form. It is shown that 'anglicisation' goes beyond translation in Auchinleck, as tail-rhyme is used for the romances of English heroes in a way that confirms it is understood as an English form, whatever its linguistic inheritance. That this contrasts with the metrical forms used for Arthurian texts in the manuscript may illuminate the scarcity of tail-rhyme Arthurian romance until the insular development of later Gawain romances. Her discussion of the close relationships amongst the tail-rhyme romances of Auchinleck confirms an untidy history of borrowings, compilation and movement of texts and writers around and beyond the metropolitan literary circuit. Through a detailed assessment of the prosodic, philological, and manuscript evidence, Purdie finally lays to rest the stubborn 'school of East Anglia,' proposed by A. McI. Trounce (Medium Ævum 1.2-3.1). Her final chapter on the geography [End Page 130] of tail-rhyme moves the discussion away from any single center of origin or activity. Tail-rhyme is a feature of fluid and overlapping regional literary centers, across much of England. A later development gives more elaborate tail-rhyme romances no longer derived from French or Anglo-Norman but original productions of a northern literary culture. This book is underpinned by a much-needed, updated survey of the date, language and provenance of each of the thirty-six tail-rhyme romances in an Appendix that is in its own right a rich resource for future researchers. Tail-rhyme romance has been under-appreciated and misunderstood—the responsibility for this shared between Sir Thopas and Trounce. Purdie's study provides the first comprehensive account of the form and its romance texts and wider cultural contexts. It is meticulous in its detail and convincing in its arguments, but above...

Family Values in the Old South (review)

Values in the Old South. Edited by Craig Thompson Friend and Anya Jabour. (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2010. Pp. 257. Cloth: $69.95.)Reviewed by Gary T. EdwardsA general consensus among social historians is that the has long been viewed as the axiomatic interpretive variable of the Old South. At the same time, modern southerners may be more self-critical of stability than ever before. In recognition of both facts, the unpretentious goal of this collection of new scholarship is uncover more about life and than we have previously known (6). In this regard, these essays easily surpass expectations and offer a broad array of nuanced themes that explore all the vital elements of antebellum historiography. More specifically, the authors call into question the monolithic centrality of the white nuclear and its supposed constancy across space and time. By challenging popular definitions of identity, racial homogeneity, gender orientation, and household economy, the essays collectively search for clues of familial evolution from the traditional to the modern. Throughout the volume there are compelling examples of individuals who highly esteemed their own biological kin or, in their absence, often constructed disparate types of fictive kin in ways that were both temporary and long-term.The editorial vision set forth by Friend and Jabour is sharp and refined as it seeks to draw the strongest contrast between twenty-firstcentury rhetoric (rooted in nostalgia for an imagined past) with an antebellum ambiguity (rooted in the reality of a contested past). However, in contesting the static view of attributed to modern conservatism while solidifying support for a more fluid model, the editors may be preaching to the choir within academe. The converts they seek in popular culture may not embrace this historically fluid model of for some time - for instance, consider the tenacious popular notion that race is not a social construct. Nevertheless, the debate is an important one, and the public beyond the ivory tower appears more eager of late to define the historicity of family values explicitly. Certainly any meaningful public discourse requires diligent framers, such as these essayists, who can advance the discussion within and without the scholarly realm.The first and most ambitious section of the book's three parts explores the difficult questions of familial identities and boundaries. Nancy Zey's Family Life in Orphan Asylums of the Lower Mississippi Valley investigates the marginal world of the orphanage and proves that inhabitants and observers alike considered such institutions, when well run, sufficient and even nurturing substitutes for biological kin. Covering slightly more familiar ground in Rethinking Cross-Plantation Marriages, Emily West expands on her earlier work and reaffirms the relative centrality of the cross-plantation marriage among South Carolina slaves. Her conclusion that such unions were not single-parent families but self-actualized choices of the enslaved further strengthens our sense of the concealed autonomy within slave marriages. Craig Thompson Friend employs familial mourning and race as variables for questioning what, if anything, was southern about childhood death. Friend's aptly titled Little Eva's Last Breath draws on Harriet Beecher Stowe's famous deathbed scene from Uncle Tom's Cabin. However, in a compelling literary comparison he contrasts Eva with the protagonist in Cassy. Published three years after Uncle Tom, its anonymous author created an inversion of Eva's illustrious death surrounded by her and white. Instead, the black child Cassy died alone only to be transformed into a white angel in the afterlife. Considering the plethora of untapped antebellum manuscript evidence on death, Friend offers an innovative paradigm for others to consider for the creative utilization of similar narrative sources. …

Flattened Primroses: Discarded Floral Symbolism in an Early Manuscript Version of D. H. Lawrence's Odour of Chrysanthemums

D. H. LAWRENCE’S short story, Odour of Chrysanthemums, as Keith Cushman has observed, is ‘bound together by the pervasive imagery of the flowers in its title’. Chrysanthemums are used repeatedly to symbolize ‘the cycle of birth, marriage, defeat and drunkenness, and death’ associated with the marriage of Walter and Elizabeth Bates.1 However, chrysanthemums are not the only flowers which figure in the text, and manuscript evidence indicates that, at an early stage in the complex evolution of the tale, Lawrence also envisaged using primroses to symbolize the relationship between husband and wife. The evidence is contained in a six-page manuscript fragment in the Lawrence Papers (Roberts-Vasey E284a) which provides an interesting insight into Lawrence’s attempts to depict the dramatic moment, at the conclusion of the story, when Walter Bates’ body is brought home to the family cottage from the mine. John Worthen, in his edition of this fragment, has characterized it as ‘a far briefer version of the end of the story than appears in any other state of the text’ and observes that ‘the appearance of the manuscript suggests a working draft.’2 The pertinent section reads as follows: They were bringing him on a board, and the board wouldn’t come in at the door, it was too big. The women had the awful picture of a man trying to back into the house with a black board, on which they could see two heavily shod feet, and the suggestion of a figure. Then the men talked in low voices. They laid the board on the garden—on the double primroses.3

Childbirth, Chills, and Fever: Manuscript Evidence for Medicine at St Guthlac’s Priory, Hereford

A single manuscript (Oxford, Jesus College, MS 37) from the collection formerly held at St Guthlac’s Priory, Hereford, presents limited evidence (in both its content and its structure) for an ongoing interest in medicine and cures on the part of the priory monks. It is suggested that the manuscript was adapted over time to meet practical considerations arising from the active engagement by the monks (or others acting on their behalf) in ministering to the wider Hereford community. These conclusions, arrived at via an analysis of the manuscript’s key texts, are supported by a consideration of trends in the provision of pastoral care in medieval Hereford.

The Homiliary of Angers in tenth-century England

AbstractLatin manuscripts used for preaching the Anglo-Saxon laity in the tenth century survive in relatively rare numbers. This paper contributes a new text to the known preaching resources from that century in identifying the Homiliary of Angers as the text preserved on the flyleaves of London, British Library, MS Sloane 280. While these fragments, made in Kent and edited here for the first time, cast new light on the importance of this plain and unadorned Latin collection for the composition of Old English temporale homilies before Ælfric, they also represent the oldest surviving manuscript evidence of the text.

`Ayn al-Qudat al-Hamadhani, His Work, and His Connection with the Early Chishti Mystics

`Ayn al-Qudat (AD 1096/98–1131) was a significant scholar of Islamic mysticism whose teachings inspired others and especially the early Chishti mystics of India. This article discusses the importance of `Ayn al-Qudat through an analysis of his work and his reception by medieval and modern scholars. It argues that marginal manuscript evidence from `Ayn al-Qudat's writing suggests the possibility of contact between him and his teacher, Ahmad ibn Muhammad Ghazzali (d. AD 1126), and their contemporary Chishti mystic sheikh, Qutb al-Din Mawdud (d. AD 1133).

Two Pre-Modern Etymologists: The Connections between Johann Georg Wachter (1663–1757) and Johan Ihre (1707–1780)

In 1737 the German philologist Johann Georg Wachter (1663–1757) published an etymological dictionary of the German language, Glossarium Germanicum. This book had a great influence on the most prominent Swedish philologist of the eighteenth century, Johann Ihre (1707–1780), professor at Uppsala University. In 1769 Ihre published, along the same lines as Wachter's work, a Swedish etymological dictionary. The present article aims at tracing Wachter's influence on Ihre, and is partly based on manuscript evidence.

Reading Emily Dickinson's letters: critical essays

Emily Dickinson, who regarded letter as a joy of Earth, was herself gifted epistolary artist -- cryptic and allusive in style, dazzling in verbal effects, and sensitively attuned to the recipients of her many letters. In this volume, distinguished literary scholars focus intensively on Dickinson's letter-writing and what her letters reveal about her poetics, her personal associations, and her self-awareness as writer. Although Dickinson's letters have provided invaluable perspective for biographers and lovers of poetry since Mabel Loomis Todd published the first selection in 1894, today's scholarly climate opens potential for fresh insights drawn from new theoretical approaches, informed cultural contextualizations, and rigorous examination of manuscript evidence. Essays in this collection explore ways that Emily Dickinson adapted nineteenth-century epistolary conventions of women's culture, as well as how she directed her writing to particular readers, providing subtly tactful guidance to ways of approaching her poetics. Close examination of her letters reveals the conscious artistry of Dickinson's writing, from her auditory effects to her experiments with form and tone. Her well-known correspondences with Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Susan Dickinson, Helen Hunt Jackson, and Otis Phillips Lord are examined here, but so too are previously neglected family communications with her aunt Kate Sweetser and cousin Eugenia Montague. Contributors find in these various letters evidence of Dickinson's enthusiastic participation in sort of epistolary book club involving multiple friends, as well as her loving attentiveness to individuals in times of both suffering and joy. These inquiries highlight her thoughts on love, marriage, gender roles, art, and death, while unraveling mysteries ranging from legal discourse to Etruscan smiles.In addition to foreword by Marietta Messmer, the volume includes essays by Paul Crumbley, Karen Dandurand, Jane Donahue Eberwein, Judith Farr, James Guthrie, Ellen Louise Hart, Eleanor Heginbotham, Cindy MacKenzie, Martha Nell Smith, and Stephanie Tingley.

The spread of ‘sandhih-’ in thirteenth-century Welsh

After a hiatus following the Old Welsh period, Welsh manuscript evidence resumes c. 1250, and can now be studied in minute detail owing to the construction of a palaeographical chronology for the manuscripts and the availability of machine-readable and other modern editions. These reveal that the so-called ‘sandhi h-’ after first-person pronouns in modern literary Welsh is not ancient, but slowly emerged in the late thirteenth century as a hypercorrect phonetic tendency after nasal consonants which gradually became grammaticalised after pronouns ending in a nasal.

An Unrecorded Binding from the Shop of Thomas Bedford, the ‘Dragon Binder’ (fl. 1486–1506)

This short note provides a description of the binding to be found on Amherst College Incun 1496 C4. A Jean de Vingle edition of Cicero’s Epistolae ad familiares (Lyons, 1496), the binding is identified as the work of Thomas Bedford, ‘The Dragon Binder’. There is manuscript evidence to suggest that its early owners were students or scholars, probably in Oxford. Additional inscriptions identify seventeenth century ownership by Thomas and Robert Yeaveley.

The "Real Thing": How to Read How to Read the Bible

The Real Thing: How to Read How to Read the Bible James L. Kugel. How to Read the BibL·: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now. New York: Free Press, 2007. Pp. xiv + 819.About decade ago at an interdisciplinary conference at Jerusalem's Hartman Institute, kipa-donning Hebrew University professor presented paper on the dual authorship of one of the books of the prophets; an argument for single authorship, as the sages maintain, could simply not be sustained in the face of the book's many contradictions. The talk consisted of neatly organizing the work, attributing different of the allegedly contradictory passages to one or the of the hypothetical authors. That evening, at festive meal of the scholars gathered for the conference I mentioned that I was writing book on Milton and remarked that had there been no manuscript evidence of Milton's authorship of Paradise Lot, then there would be no way to ascribe single authorship, paving the way for documentary hypothesis of multiple authors, as Julius Wellhausen (1844-1918) and others had provided for the Hebrew Bible. The poet who wrote the first book of the epic with all of its satanic energies (S) could not be the author who later demanded obedience from Adam and Eve in Book 9 (O). God's speech in Book 3 must have been added by some priestly writer ([P] the authoritarian style and content so different from the rest of the epic!); and the problematic additions of Books 11 and 12, an untransmuted lump of undigested materials as C. S. Lewis called them in 1961, were surely the accretions of some later Miltonic writers (W).With the exception ol the Cambridge classicist Richard Bentley, who in 1732 published an edition oi Paradise Loot attributing the bits he didn't like to either meddlesome editor or Milton's daughter (who supposedly failed to correctly transcribe her father's wishes), scholars have struggled to deal with the unity of the epic. In the long history of Milton's reception, Paradise Loot's, complexity remains troublesome, producing many onesided readings (often caricatural) of the poet. Alternatively, Milton is attacked for his contradictions, or, in recent critical evaluation version of the documentary hypothesis in Milton studies, there is not one Milton but rather plurality of Miltons.1Milton's reception may seem an unlikely starting point for consideration of James Kugel's How to Read the Bible, yet Kugel's methodology has much in common with those who have rendered Milton either contradictory or multiple. Kugel employs the many resources at his disposal - among them archaeology, anthropology, and linguistics - to show the ways that Hebrew Bible, once thought unified, has been revealed to be contradictory and incoherent. Far from one that is seamless and perfect, Kugel argues for Bible that is seamy and all too imperfect, the obvious words of men from different periods and social strata (pp. 14, 766, n. 15). Kugel pursues this argument through almost seven hundred pages (followed by copious notes); his evident charisma - for good reason his survey course on the Hebrew Bible was long the most popular course at Harvard - shows itself on every page. How to Read the Bible is less an original scholarly (as Kugel himself acknowledges) than presentation of biblical scholarship to nonacademic audience. The story which takes center stage is the contrast between the reading habits of and modern scholars, and people went from one way of reading the Bible to reading it in another (p. 2). The shift in reading habits began with early figures like Thomas Hobbes, Richard Simon, and Benedict Spinoza and comes to fruition in the scholars who show how the interpretations of ancient interpreters were meant to occlude the real Bible- in actuality not only human work but a hundred pieces often quite unrelated to each other (p. 766, n. 15). That Kugel, who now teaches full-time at the same religious Israeli university that I do, proclaims himself an Orthodox Jew (even as he provides the devastating evidence of scholars [pp. …

Henry Fielding, Richard Bentley, and the 'Sagacious Reader' of Tom Jones

In Tom Jones, Fielding frequently interrupts his narrative and addresses himself to a ‘sagacious Reader’. This stylistic feature was widely imitated by the novelists of the 1750s, and has attracted the attention of critics interested in reader response. In identifying his readers as ‘sagacious’, and in inviting them to offer conjectures on his narrative, Fielding alludes to the work of the classical scholar Richard Bentley. Bentley was renowned (and widely reviled) for supposedly disregarding the authority of manuscript evidence. He placed great faith in his intuitive ability to discover the true reading of a text, and he described this ability as sagacity. Fielding finds in Bentley’s conjectural criticism a useful analogy for the relationship between narrator and reader. In casting his readers as Bentleian critics, he acknowledges their ability to interpret the text on the basis of their own prejudices and predilections. Like the authors whose texts Bentley has reconfigured, he is at the mercy of later readers’ tastes. Fielding is aware that his readers are unknowable, and that they may construe his text in diverse and unexpected ways. In the novel’s opening chapter he presents himself as the master of an ordinary, and his readers as exacting diners. But Tom Jones is also presented as a version of ancient epic—a text from which an inviolable meaning can eventually be extracted through patient scholarship. By invoking Bentley—and by stressing the primary, sensory application of sagacity—Fielding steers a course between these two contradictory positions.

<i>Striving with Grace: Views of Free Will in Anglo-Saxon England</i> (review)

Reviewed by: Striving with Grace: Views of Free Will in Anglo-Saxon England Jonathan Wilcox Striving with Grace: Views of Free Will in Anglo-Saxon England. By Aaron J. Kleist. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008. Pp. xvii + 420. $90. This is a book based on an appealing premise—to pursue a single important theological idea across the complexity of writings in Anglo-Saxon England—which is fulfilled with notable success. Teasing through the complexity of theological thought that has accrued on the distinction between striving and grace, Aaron Kleist lays out the thought of three patristic writers, Augustine, Gregory, and Bede, and four Anglo-Saxon authors they influenced. Kleist uses source study and manuscript evidence along with close reading to make a contribution to the history of ideas, uncovering the subtlety of thought of some of the most important named authors of Anglo-Saxon England—Alfred, perhaps Wulfstan, and Ælfric, as well as the lesser-known Lantfred of Winchester. The result is a deeply informed theological study that provides insight into the thought world of Anglo-Saxon England. The issue of merit vs. grace, or the role of human volition in distinction to the capacities given by the creator, is a hugely important one for Christian thought, leading quickly to consideration of the source of evil, the extent of human freedom [End Page 533] of will, and the conundrum of predetermination. Differences within the debate are often rather subtle, yet small distinctions mattered a lot with various unsuccessful views condemned as heresies. Manichean, Donatist, Pelagian, and Semi-Pelagian positions are sketched out with admirable clarity and economy by Kleist, who shows how underlying all the discussion is a delicate pas de deux between striving and grace, freedom of will and divine determinism. Kleist presents in a few pages Augustine’s evolving position, which was to become orthodoxy despite his perhaps surprising extreme emphasis on grace over merit. Gregory, Kleist shows, gives a bit more weight to human striving, while Bede, despite repeatedly stressing grace, provides yet more emphasis on human merit in striving. Kleist shows how the work of all three fathers circulated in Anglo-Saxon England and suggests they provide a range of orthodox options for subsequent writers to draw on. Bede plays a pivotal role as both a father of the church and a thinker within Anglo-Saxon England, and the remainder of this study focuses on theological positions in England. Kleist briefly moves away from explicitly Christian theological work to consider Boethius’ Neoplatonic Consolation of Philosophy, which includes prominent consideration of the source of evil and the nature of free will, a work that famously circulated in an Alfredian translation. Kleist considers how the work is Christianized through the commentary traditions, explaining in part its huge popularity in the Middle Ages, and considers anew the famous image of the axle and the idea of divine foreknowledge within the Old English translation, which turns out to present a largely Augustinian position on grace. Kleist then turns to an altogether less familiar work, Lantfred of Winchester’s Carmen de libero arbitrio, a poem on free will by a probably Frankish monk who visited Winchester in association with the Benedictine reform, which, Kleist shows, pulls away from Augustine’s emphasis on prevenient grace to embrace a Semi-Pelagian heresy in its emphasis on human volition. Kleist then considers a Latin sermon preserved in Copenhagen, Kongelige Bibliotek, MS Gamle Kongelige Sammlung 1595, a work either composed by or strongly associated with Wulfstan the Homilist. Most of Wulfstan’s vernacular writings paint with too broad a brush to allow Kleist to position the archbishop in relation to the debates on free will, but this Latin sermon, Kleist shows, draws on a book of Cassian’s Collationes that was central to the Semi-Pelagian heresy and condemned on that account. Despite that source, the theology of the Wulfstanian sermon sounds mostly unexceptionable, apparently by simply avoiding those parts of the Collatio that had been condemned as heretical by Prosper of Aquitaine. Nevertheless, it perpetrates Semi-Pelagian thought in just the way a homilist might be expected to, by stressing the individual’s responsibility for repentance where, Kleist suggests, Augustine would have insisted...

A Survey of Evidence in the Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine Oncology Manuscripts from 1999 to 2007

To survey and monitor trends in evidence for oncology manuscripts published in the Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine (JVIM) between 1999 and 2007 based on an evidence-based medicine (EBM) standard. All veterinary oncology-related articles published in JVIM and 7 other high-impact journals from 1999 to 2007 were collected by database searches. Relevant manuscripts then were characterized including investigator affiliation, subject matter investigated, retrospective or prospective study design, manuscript type, and classifications of manuscripts using an EBM standard. A total of 172 relevant veterinary oncology manuscripts were identified in JVIM between 1999 and 2007. The proportion of oncology manuscripts published each year rose with the total number of manuscripts published in JVIM (mean, 13%; range, 8-15%). The author affiliations and subject matter were similar during this evaluation period. Case series represented the most common manuscript type (40%). With the exception of a progressive increase in prospective manuscripts and a reduction in case reports, no significant changes in the classification of manuscripts using EBM standards were seen. During this same period, veterinary oncology manuscripts published in 7 high-impact journals were associated with higher standards of evidence including prospective studies and randomized trials. The standards of evidence for veterinary oncology manuscripts published in JVIM have remained static between 1999 and 2007. This survey provides an informative benchmark for the state of evidence in previous JVIM oncology manuscripts and may be useful in identifying specific opportunities that may raise the standards of evidence in future publications in JVIM.

Le Juvénal des Carolingiens à la lumière du Ms Cambridge King’s College 52

Since the nineteenth century, Heiric ‘of Auxerre’, as he is usually called, has been credited with a commentary on Juvenal’s Satires attributed in some late manuscripts to a Cornutus. No earlier manuscript evidence has ever been found for Heiric’s authorship. The manuscript that is now Cambridge King’s College 52, privately owned until 1954 and ignored by all editors of Juvenal, furnishes the oldest testimony for the Nicaean subscription and contains one of the richest sets of glosses in the ninth-century manuscripts. On paleographical grounds it can be considered a product of the scriptorium of Hincmar of Rheims, and its text belongs to Knoche’s lambda family, held to go back to Antiquity. Its marginal commentary, copied along with the text, contains, in condensed form, most of the information found in the vulgate ‘Cornutus commentary’. Some of the glosses, added later, can be attributed to the hand of Heiric. Most of this material also appears in the vulgate commentary. The King’s manuscript makes it possible to recognize the Carolingian contribution to what is mostly a late-antique commentary. Thus, it advances our understanding of the Carolingian approach to Roman satire, which in fact seems quite limited and largely concerned with prosody.