The Identification and Use of Authorial Variants in the Miller 's Tale (original) (raw)
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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 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
Authorial constraints in an Old English prose translation of the Bible
The very study of stylistics implies the existence of an author who chooses what language to use in composing the text, creating plot, character, atmosphere, and other literary elements with these choices. But a number of texts, including translations and history-based narratives, by their very nature constrain the choices available to the author. Such is the case in the Old English prose translation of the biblical book of Esther, which involves translation (both linguistic and cultural), history, and (presumed) inspiration. This paper explores some of the constraints on the author of this text, Ælfric of Eynsham, who lived and prolifically wrote during the 10th and 11th centuries. I focus in particular on the authorial constraints in characterization methods, including Culpeper’s (2001) category of ‘authorial cues’. I begin by proposing a discourse structure for the text, adapted from Short’s (1996) model, and discussing the limited usefulness of this model. I then examine passages in the Old English Esther and its Latin sources, revealing Ælfric’s careful balancing act between modifying and preserving the original source material. I will demonstrate that our assumptions about the author and his relationship to the text are not always as straightforward as we might like to think, and that we must give careful consideration to the author’s constraints in relation to his source materials in order to produce truly robust stylistic analysis of these types of texts.
The Tradition of Manuscripts: A New Approach
The Heythrop Journal, 1978
The editor of a text preserved in an extensive tradition is confronted continually by disagreement among the manuscripts. Each variant reading may be evaluated by two types of criterion: (a) its intrinsic worth (how well it explains the origin of its rivals, and harmonizes with what is known from elsewhere of the author's usage), and (b) the character of and relationship between the witnesses which attest it. Our aim here is to extend the use of the latter sort of consideration, aptly termed 'distributional' by A.A. Hill,' though not at the expense of the former.
2023
This PhD dissertation develops incongruence as a critical category for the study of multi-text manuscripts. It argues that the makers of manuscripts in French, Occitan, and Franco-Italian between ca. 1250 and 1350 deployed incongruence to create “thought laboratories,” which are spaces for readers to engage in speculative thinking on targeted questions. In line with the habits of dialectical thinking of the time, readers were encouraged to reflect on the tensions that arise from the conflicting assessments, contradicting reasonings, and discrepant values found in the contents of multi-text manuscripts. This dissertation establishes the significant role of incongruence—defined as the dissonance in theme, tone, or logic between two or more co-present texts—in the production and reading of multi-text manuscripts of vernacular literature, which make up two thirds of vernacular books in the period 1250–1350. The introduction sets up the theoretical and historical framework for the dissertation by discussing the key notions of “text,” “book,” and “practice,” which it relates to literary studies, codicology, and anthropology. It defines thought laboratories as spaces of speculative thinking provided by multi-text manuscripts, and it proposes that incongruence was mobilized by the makers of manuscripts to direct readers’ attention to points of contention with which they were invited to engage. Chapter 1 discusses how the inclusion of obscene parodic stanzas in a troubadour songbook from Italy creates a dialectical relationship between lyrics presented as canonical and parodic stanzas that deride them through their obscene imitations. The incongruence of the obscene stanzas within a songbook that presents its contents as cultural capital worth preserving and emulating invites inquiry into the formation of a canon and the role of songbooks in consecrating a cultural heritage. Chapter 2 examines a North-Eastern French manuscript that creates a debate between a cleric and the woman he woos. The debate thematizes clerical learning and the role of gender in claims to knowledge and assertions of sincerity, since the validity of the debaters’ claims and their motivations are constantly questioned. Through the logical setup of the ending of the debate, which is incongruous with the logic of the debate that precedes it, readers face the difficulty of having to take sides in a debate they are supposed to judge impartially. When weighing the arguments, they get to perform the interrelation of gender and knowledge that the debaters expose. Chapter 3 considers the role of irony, discrepant character assessments, the presence of prose, and that of the Roman de Renart within a collection of Arthurian verse romances from North-Eastern France. By bending the expectations strongly associated with a very codified genre, these elements cast into relief the motivations that lie behind the glorification of chivalric heroes and the presentation of an ideal political order. Because several texts in this manuscript are interrupted or end ambivalently, it allows readers to think about alternative endings to the romances it contains. Chapter 4 examines a Northern Italian compilation of prose and verse historiographical material interspersed with didactic and sapiential texts. The incongruences of fact and of assessment, the incongruous co-presence of prose and verse, and the uneasy chronological ordering of texts draw attention to misfits in this collection. Readers, who are faced with a history in pieces, can reassemble texts into a history they deem more suitable, which leads to an interrogation of what constitutes suitable history. Through attention to the strategies of compilation, textual intervention, and illumination deployed by the makers of medieval manuscripts to direct the attention of readers, this dissertation argues for an intellectually engaged and creative way of reading vernacular literature in manuscripts between 1250 and 1350.