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The Visual Craft of Old English Verse: Mise-En-Page in Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts

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The Visual Craft of Old English Verse: Mise-En-Page in Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts The visual craft of Old English verse: mise-en-page in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts Rachel Ann Burns UCL PhD in English Language and Literature 1 I, Rachel Ann Burns confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. Rachel Ann Burns 2 Table of Contents Abstract 8 Acknowledgements 10 Abbreviations 12 List of images and figures 13 List of tables 17 CHAPTER ONE: Introduction 18 Organisation of the page 26 Traditional approaches to Old English verse mise-en-page 31 Questions and hypotheses 42 Literature review and critical approaches 43 Terminology and methodologies 61 Full chapter plan 68 CHAPTER TWO: Demarcation of the metrical period in the Latin verse texts of Anglo-Saxon England 74 Latin verse on the page: classical and late antiquity 80 Latin verse in early Anglo-Saxon England: identifying sample sets 89 New approach 92 Identifying a sample set 95 Basic results from the sample set 96 Manuscript origins and lineation 109 Order and lineation: acrostic verse 110 3 Order and lineation: computistical verse and calendars 115 Conclusions from the sample set 118 Divergence from Old English 119 Learning Latin in Anglo-Saxon England: the ‘shape’ of verse 124 Contrasting ‘shapes’: Latin and Old English composition 128 Hybrid layouts, and the failure of lineated Old English verse 137 Correspondences with Latin rhythmic verse 145 Conclusions 150 CHAPTER THREE: Inter-word Spacing in Beowulf and the neurophysiology of scribal engagement with Old English verse 151 Thesis and hypothesis 152 Introduction of word-spacing in the Latin West 156 Previous scholarship on the significance of inter-word spacing 161 Robert D. Stevick’s theory of ‘graphotactics’ 170 A new methodology and data collection 185 Presenting the data 191 Data analysis 192 Semantic and metrical units 200 Explaining spacing patterns: conditions of scribal engagement 204 4 Scribal performance and the rhythms of memory 210 Other texts: prose and hypermetric verse 214 Conclusions, questions and further study 218 CHAPTER FOUR: ‘Restless surfaces’: an aesthetic approach to Old English verse layout 221 Theoretical approach and existing scholarship 226 Establishing a vocabulary: aesthetics, style, taste and art 226 Anglo-Saxon aesthetic awareness 231 Text and image 232 Identifying a ‘stylistic grammar’ 244 The aesthetics of the standard page 246 Density in Anglo-Saxon style 249 Density on the page 254 Density and the written page 260 Filling blank spaces 261 Metrical patterning as geometric shape on the page 275 Metrical form and visual aesthetic 279 Conclusions 285 CHAPTER FIVE: Alphabets and Litterae in The Dialogues of Solomon and Saturn. 286 Textual overview and codicology 288 Establishing an eastern geography in the poems 300 Greek learning and the use of alternative alphabets in Anglo-Saxon England 307 5 The state of Greek scholarship in medieval Europe 308 Contemporary understanding of language history 310 Evocative usage of Greek forms, and Greek as visual ornament 312 Greek alphabets in the manuscript tradition 318 Conclusions: contemporary appreciation of Greek language 321 Solomon & Saturn I: alternative alphabets 322 Sources of wisdom 327 Solomon & Saturn II: manipulating graphemes on the borders 344 Conclusions 351 CHAPTER SIX: Conclusions 352 Impacts: editing Old English verse 357 Reforming practices in the editing of Anglo-Saxon poetry: existing scholarship 359 A new model of mise-en-page: audience, desirability and digital editing 364 Limitations of the study and future work 369 Concluding thoughts 371 Appendix A: Manuscript images 372 Appendix B: Inter-word spacing datasets 399 Appendix C: Sample inter-word spacing transcriptions from Scribe A of Beowulf 400 6 Appendix D: Anglo-Saxon manuscripts containing Greek alphabets 406 Selected bibliography and consulted works 411 Primary materials from physical repositories 411 Primary materials from digital sources 411 Reference materials 417 Editions, translations and facsimiles 419 Secondary materials 425 Additional materials: Appendix B constitutes a separate digital file. In the printed copy of this thesis, this can be found as an attached CD-ROM. 7 Abstract It is standard editorial practice to abstract Old English verse lines from the unlineated layout of their manuscript witnesses, and rearrange them as discrete metrical lines arranged vertically, broken by a medial space at the caesura. The ubiquity of this practice, and its correspondence with the graphic conventions of modern print editions more generally, may account for the widespread scholarly assumption that the unlineated mise-en-page of Old English verse in situ arises from its status as low-grade vernacular, with scribes lacking either the resources or the sophistication to apply Latinate standards of lineation to Old English texts. This thesis challenges such assumptions, proposing instead that an unlineated format was the preferred arrangement for Old English verse, and that vernacular mise-en-page is capable of conveying important structural, prosodic and semantic information about its texts. Chapter Two surveys the development of lineation in Anglo-Latin manuscripts, establishing a context for the subsequent writing of Old English verse. The chapter hypothesises that the different mise-en-page conventions for Latin and Old English reflects their distinct metrical structures. A study of inter-word spacing in Chapter 3 suggests that scribes may have been cognisant of metrical structures as they wrote, and that these structures influenced the process of writing. Chapters Four and Five move away from structural resonance between text and mise-en-page, towards aesthetic and semantic resonances. Chapter Four argues that a preference for dense, unlineated mise-en-page is grounded in the traditions of surface-design in vernacular art. Chapter Five shows a scribe arranging and ornamenting the elements of mise-en-page to highlight the narrative structure, 8 textual allusiveness and esoteric theme of the text. The thesis concludes by reviewing the state of play in Old English textual editing with regards to manuscript features, giving some thoughts on how the findings of this thesis might speak to future editorial work. 9 Acknowledgements This thesis was made possible by a research studentship from the London Arts and Humanities Partnership, which is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. I am immensely grateful for their support and training. I am fortunate to have been supervised by two generous and inspirational professors at UCL. Susan Irvine oversaw the initial stages of my thesis. Her unfailing support for my other academic projects has made me a more confident and rounded scholar; her encouragement of my more experimental work (and her kind way of letting me know when it was too experimental) motivated me to be diligent, radical and interdisciplinary in my work. Richard North took on my thesis in its later stages with gusto. His detailed advice has shaped this thesis into its final form, and I will be forever grateful for his conversation, his reassurance, and occasionally his hounding. I also owe a debt of thanks to Andy Orchard and Francis Leneghan, who taught me in the Anglo-Saxon elements of my Master’s degree at Oxford, and have continued to provide support and advice during my doctoral studies. I must mention Daniel Wakelin, who first taught me palaeography; I challenge anyone faced with the panache and wit of his teaching not to become a manuscripts scholar. Daniel Thomas, who taught me as an undergraduate, has been on hand to give me sage advice at every stage of my academic journey. Sian Gronlie was one of the first people I met at Oxford, when I turned up at interviews talking excitedly about kennings; the tutoring she and Daniel gave me at St. Anne’s cemented my love of Anglo-Saxon literature. Further in the past, but no less critical, is the care and dedication of Trevor Allinson and Jacquie Reid, my English teachers at Pate’s 10 Grammar School, who constantly went beyond the call of duty for their students. There are too few words here to thank them for all they have done for me. In the course of my studies I have been the fortunate recipient of feedback and advice from the academics and students I have met or worked with. In particular, I have benefitted from the wisdom and support of Julia Crick, Daniel Anlezark, Thomas Bredehoft, Jenny Neville, Elaine Treharne, Malcolm Godden, Tony Edwards, Roy Liuzza, Helen Appleton, Hannah Bailey, Simon Thomson and Vicky Symons. My friends have been a constant source of strength, especially those who emerged in surprising numbers with offers of proofreading. I want to thank my mother Trish and my father Daryl for all their love and their patience. When I went to work as a consultant in London, they were quietly sceptical; when I decided I would return to university to study for my Master’s degree, they were loud with pride and support. They still hope I will end my days in a garret writing poetry. Final thanks are reserved for Kitson, with whom my time will now be less fragmented by distance. Ο]ἰ μὲν ἰππήων ςτρότον, οἰ δὲ πέςδων, / οἰ δὲ νάων φαῖς᾽ ἐπ[ὶ] γᾶν μέλαι[ν]αν / ἔ]μμεναι κάλλιςτον ἔγω δὲ κῆν᾽ ὄτ– / τω τὶς ἔραται. 11 Abbreviations Add. Additional Manuscripts (series of the British Library) ANQ ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews ASE Anglo-Saxon England ASPR Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records BL British Library CCCC Cambridge, Corpus Christi College CUL Cambridge University Library DOE Dictionary of Old English EEMF Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile HE Historia Ecclesiastica JEGP Journal of English and Germanic Philology JEL Journal of English Linguistics MÆ Medium Ævum MP Modern Philology MS(S) manuscript(s) NM Neuphilologische Mitteilungen N&Q Notes and Queries OED Oxford English Dictionary OEN Old English Newsletter RES Review of English Studies 12 List of images and figures Images Image 1: ‘the seas hold the skies colour’, in Alec Finlay, Change what changes 28 Image 2: Thureth, in London, BL, Cotton Claudius A.
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