UCC Library and UCC researchers have made this item openly available. Please let us know how this has helped you. Thanks! Title Textual criticism and medieval Irish studies Author(s) Doran, Michelle Therese Publication date 2015 Original citation Doran, M.T. 2015. Textual criticism and medieval Irish studies. PhD Thesis, University College Cork. Type of publication Doctoral thesis Rights © 2015, Michelle Therese Doran. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ Item downloaded http://hdl.handle.net/10468/2162 from Downloaded on 2021-10-07T00:23:17Z Textual Criticism and Medieval Irish Studies Thesis submitted for the Degree of PhD Candidate: Michelle Doran Institute: University College Cork Department: Early and Medieval Irish Studies Submitted: October 2015 Head of Department: Prof. John Carey Supervisor: Dr. Kevin Murray CONTENTS Table of Figures .................................................................................................... ii List of Abbreviations .......................................................................................... iii Declaration ............................................................................................................ v Acknowledgments ............................................................................................... vi Introduction ........................................................................................................... 1 1. The Development of Modern Textual Critical Theory and Practice ............. 10 2. Textual Criticism and Medieval Irish Studies ............................................... 55 3. Editing Medieval Irish Narrative Prose ...................................................... 111 4. Theory into Practice: The Application of Textual Criticism to Baile Binnbérlach mac Búain .................................................................................... 182 5. Theory into Practice II: The Application of Textual Criticism to Medieval Irish Poetry ....................................................................................................... 237 6. Digital Editing: ‘New Life for an Old Form’ .............................................. 312 Conclusion ........................................................................................................ 339 Appendix One Theory into Practice: The Application of Textual Criticism to Baile Binnbérlach mac Búain ........................................................................... 346 Appendix Two A Question of Orders ............................................................... 368 Bibliography ..................................................................................................... 370 i TABLE OF FIGURES Figure 1.1: A Sample Stemma ................................................................................... 24 Figure 2.1: Stokes’ 1880 edition of Félire Óengusso Céli Dé ................................... 89 Figure 2.2: Stokes’ 1905 edition of Félire Óengusso Céli Dé ................................... 90 Figure 2.3: Binchy, ‘Bretha Crólige’, p. 9 ................................................................. 91 Figure 2.4: Carney, ‘The Ó Cianáin Miscellany’, p. 135 ........................................... 92 Figure 2.5: Bieler and Carney, ‘The Lambeth Commentary’, p. 12 .......................... 93 Figure 3.1: Parker’s Illustration of the Types of Variation Between Three Manuscripts of Luke 6:1-10 ..................................................................................... 124 Figure 3.2: Epp’s Variant Concious Edition of the Ascension Narratives: Luke 24:50-53 ................................................................................................................... 125 Figure 3.3: §45 Windisch's 1880 Edition of Fled Bricrenn ..................................... 178 Figure 3.4: §45 of Henderson’s 1899 Edition of Fled Bricrenn .............................. 179 Figure 4.1: British Library, MS Harl. 5280, fo. 48a ................................................ 202 Figure 4.2: Carey, In Tenga Bithnua, p. 42 .............................................................. 216 Figure 4.3: BBmB: A Sample Stemma ..................................................................... 221 Figure 4.4: Scowcroft's Stemma of the Recensions of LGÉ ……………………..233 Figure 5.1: Stemma of EIL no. 34 Middle Irish Archetype ..................................... 251 ii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ACH Association for Computers in the Humanities ACLL Archive of Celtic Latin Literature AHDS Arts and Humanities Data Service AFM Annals of the Four Masters AHRC Arts and Humanities Research Council AI Annals of Inisfallen ALI Ancient Laws of Ireland ANSI American National Standards Institute ATig. Annals of Tigernach AU Annals of Ulster BB Book of Ballymote BBmB Baile Binnbérlach mac Búain CEAA Centre for Editions of American Authors CERN European Organisation for Nuclear Research CIH Corpus Iuris Hibernici CMCS Cambrian Medieval and Celtic Studies CSANA Celtic Studies Association of North America CSE Centre / Committee for Scholarly Editions DHO Digital Humanities Observatory Echtra Echtra mac nEchdach Mugmedóin EETS Early English Texts Society EIL Early Irish Lyrics FDG Fled Dúin na nGéd Fél. Félire Óengusso Céile Dé ITS Irish Texts Society HEA Higher Education Authority iii HTML Hypertext Markup Language HSIS Humanities Serving Irish Society L Book of Lismore LGÉ Lebor Gabála Érenn LL Book of Leinster MMIS Mediaeval and Modern Irish Series MR Mag Rath NT New Testament PHCC Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium PTRLI Programmes for Research in Third-Level Institutions RIA Royal Irish Academy SAM Sex Aetates Mundi SCF Studia Celtica Fennica SGML Standard Generalised Markup Language TEI Text Encoding Initiative TRIA Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy TT Texts and Transitions XML Extensible Markup Language ZCP Zeitschrift für celtishce Philolgie iv Declaration I declare that this thesis is the result of my own work and has not been submitted for another degree, either at University College Cork or any other Institution. Michelle Doran v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The completion of this work would not have been possible without the support and encouragement of many people. I wish to thank my supervisor Dr. Kevin Murray who first inspired me to pursue Early and Medieval Irish Studies many years ago. If it was his duty, then it was my pleasure to work alongside him for so many years. I am grateful to acknowledge the funding granted to me by the Higher Education Authority’s Strategic Innovation Fund. I am grateful also for the support of the organisers of the intervarsity Texts, Contexts, Cultures PhD research programme at University College Cork funded by the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences. I have been fortunate enough to have the opportunity to complete my research at the Department of Early and Medieval Irish at University College Cork. I wish to thank all my friends and colleagues from the Department, both past and present, for their help and companionship throughout this endeavor. To Philip Healy I extend special thanks for his many hours proof-reading, his valuable insights into my work, and extended coffee breaks. To my Father and Mother, my brother, my three beautiful sisters and, of course, the dogs, quite simply, thank you. Finally, to John Hogan, whose patience knows no bounds, I cannot begin to express my gratitude for all he has done to ensure this project came to fruition; and to him I dedicate this labour. vi INTRODUCTION Many textual scholars will be aware that the title of the present thesis has been composed in a conscious revisionary relation to Tim William Machan’s influential Textual Criticism and Middle English Texts.1 The primary subjects of Machan’s study are works written in English between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, the latter part of the period conventionally labelled Middle English. In contrast, the works with which I am primarily concerned are those written by scholars of Old and Middle Irish in the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Where Machan aims to articulate the textual and cultural factors that characterise Middle English works as Middle English, the purposes of this thesis are (a) to identify the underlying ideological and epistemological perspectives which have informed much of the way in which medieval Irish documents and texts are rendered into modern editions, and (b) to begin to place the editorial theory and methodology of medieval Irish studies within the broader context of Biblical, medieval and modern textual criticism. Hence, the title is Textual Criticism and Medieval Irish Studies, rather than Textual Criticism and Medieval Irish Texts. Traditionally defined, the object of textual criticism is to establish from the divergent documentary copies a form of a text regarded as most nearly conforming to the original, the result of which is a scholarly edition complete with an introduction, an apparatus criticus, textual commentary and (in many instances) a glossary.2 Until recently, the study of the transmission of the text was viewed primarily as an aid in the recovery of the underlying original. Similarly, variant 1 Tim William Machan, Textual Criticism and Middle English Texts (Charlottesville, 1994). 2 Cf. Paul Maas, Textual Criticism, trans. Barbara Flower (Oxford, 1958), p. 1: ‘The business of textual criticism is to produce a text as close as possible to the original’. 1 Introduction readings were judged to be secondary