Cover not available

In:Sociocultural Dimensions of Lexis and Text in the History of English
Edited by Peter Petré, Hubert Cuyckens and Frauke D'hoedt
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 343] 2018
► pp. 79–102

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
authorization required

Chapter 4
Conservatism and innovation in Anglo-Saxon scribal practice

Published online: 4 July 2018
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.343.04wal
Abstract
The text of the Old English Bede found in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS. 41 (B) is remarkable for its extensively updated language, when compared with other, earlier Bede manuscripts. This paper compares B with other manuscripts of the Bede to uncover some of the scribal decisions which shape the surviving text. B’s text is subject to many alterations, indicating a translator scribe who frequently updated and altered the language of his exemplar (i.e. the manuscript from which he copied to produce the present text). However, the presence of a number of nonsensical readings points to a scribe who sometimes struggled to make sense of the text in front of him and whose abilities did not extend far enough to create a good reading in the face of these difficulties. These scribal decisions allow us to identify factors which influenced the shape of B’s text, such as the interplay between B’s now-lost exemplar and its scribes’ working methods. Careful analysis of some of B’s linguistic features enables us to draw conclusions about the age and status of its exemplar and to recover some part of a lost Bede manuscript.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Methodology
  • 3.Relict forms
    • 3.1 f-shaped <y>
    • 3.2Denasalization
    • 3.3Double vowels
  • 4.B1 as emender
    • 4.1Successful interventions (lexical substitutions)
    • 4.2Unsuccessful interventions (word division)
    • 4.3Graphically based substitutions
      • 4.3.1Substitutions which retain meaning
      • 4.3.2Substitutions resulting in nonsense readings
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
References (24)
References
Benskin, Michael & Margaret Laing. 1981. Translations and Mischsprachen in Middle English manuscripts. In Michael Benskin & Michael L. Samuels (eds.), So meny people longages and tonges: Philological essays in Scots and Medieval English presented to Angus McIntosh, 55–106. Edinburgh: Benskin & Samuels [published by the editors].Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Budny, Mildred. 1997. Insular, Anglo-Saxon and early Anglo-Norman manuscript art at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge: An illustrated catalogue, 2 vols. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Campbell, Alistair. 1959. Old English grammar. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Campbell, Jackson. J. 1951. The dialect vocabulary of the Old English Bede. JEGP 50. 349–372.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dictionary of Old English corpus. [URL] (31 October, 2015.)
Grant, Raymond J. S. 1989. The B text of the Old English Bede: A linguistic commentary. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ker, Neil R. 1957. Catalogue of manuscripts containing Anglo-Saxon. Reissued with supplement in 1990. Clarendon: Oxford.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Laing, Margaret. 2004. Multidimensionality: Time, space and stratigraphy in historical dialectology. In Marina Dossena & Roger Lass (eds.), Methods and data in English Historical dialectology, 49–93. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lapidge, Michael. 2008. The Latin exemplar of the OE Bede. In Patrizia Lendinara (ed.), … un tuo serto di fiori in man recando: Scritti in onore di Maria Amalia D’Aronco, 2 vols., 235–246. Udine: Forum 2008.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Miller, T. (ed.). 1890. Bede’s ecclesiastical history of the English people. (Early English Text Society, Original Series, 95–96, 110–111). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mitchell, Bruce. 1985. Old English syntax, 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Orton, Peter. 2000. The transmission of Old English poetry. Turnhout: Brepols.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Plummer, Charles. 1896. Baedae opera historica, vol. 1. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Robinson, Fred. C. 1981. Bede’s envoi to the Old English history: An experiment in editing. Studies in Philology 78(5). 4–19. (Reprinted in Robinson, Fred C. 1994. The editing of Old English, 167–179. Oxford: Blackwell.)Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rowley, Sharon M. 2004. Nostalgia and the rhetoric of lack: The missing exemplar for Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, Manuscript 41. In Joyce T. Lionarons (ed.), Old English literature in its manuscript context, 11–36. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2011. The Old English version of Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schipper, Jacob. 1899. König Alfreds Übersetzung von Bedas Kirchengeschichte. Leipzig: Georg H. Wigands Verlag.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Scragg, Donald G. 1992. Spelling variation in eleventh-century English. In Carola Hicks (ed.), England in the eleventh century: Proceedings of the 1990 Harlaxton Symposium, 347–354. Stamford: Paul Watkins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stokes, Peter A. 2014. English vernacular minuscule from Æthelred to Cnut, circa 990–circa 1035. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Treharne, Elaine M. 2003. Producing a library in late Anglo-Saxon England: Exeter 1050–1072. Review of English Studies 54(214). 155–172. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2007. Bishops and their texts in the later eleventh century: Worcester and Exeter. In Wendy Scase (ed.), Essays in manuscript geography: Vernacular manuscripts of the English West Midlands from the conquest to the sixteenth century, 13–29. Turnhout: Brepols. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Waite, Greg. 2014. Translation style, lexical systems, dialect vocabulary, and the manuscript transmission of the Old English Bede. Medium Ævum 83(1). 1–48.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wallis, Christine. 2013. The Old English Bede: Transmission and textual history in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. Sheffield: University of Sheffield dissertation.[URL].Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2016. Unpublished dry-point annotations in a manuscript of the Old English Bede: Oxford, Corpus Christi College 279B. Medium Ævum 85(1). 15–32.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Waite, Greg
2024. The Old EnglishBede: Some Reflections on Origins and Text. In The Age of Alfred, ► pp. 151 ff. DOI logo
Afros, Elena
2022. Is the Taunton Fragmenthis þ folcanother instance of the Possessive + Demonstrative + Noun construction?. Studia Neophilologica 94:1 ► pp. 77 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 6 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue