THE LEXICON OF MIND AND MEMORY: MOOD AND MIND IN OLD AND MIDDLE ENGLISH1
Ágnes Kiricsi Károli Gáspár University, Budapest
Th e present article is a corpus study examining the semantic develop- ment of two English mind-words from the Old and Middle English periods. Th e analysis will focus on the question of how mod, the central Old English lexeme meaning “mind,” gradually changed its meaning to become Modern English mood, and how the Old English gemynd (Middle English minde)—at that time signifying “memory”—took the meaning of the Modern English mind sometime in the Middle English period. Recently, there has been quite a lot of interest in the Anglo- Saxon mind-vocabulary.2 Nevertheless, this is the fi rst study that aims at giving a comprehensive picture of the semantic development of these two words through 700 years of the English language, compris- ing Middle English, as well. In order to fi nd out how these lexemes changed their meanings in this time-span, I compiled a tailor-made corpus of Old and Middle English texts during my research.
Guiding Principles for Building the Corpus
Th e guiding principles for the compilation of the corpus were mani- fold. On the one hand, for the Old English part, all the poetry was taken from the Toronto Dictionary of Old English (DOE) corpus.3 As
1 Th is article is a revised part of my unpublished doctoral thesis: “Th e Semantic Rivalry of Mod/Mood and Gemynd/Minde” (Budapest: Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem, 2005). 2 Malcolm R. Godden, “Anglo-Saxons on the Mind,” in Old English Literature, ed. Roy M. Liuzza (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 284–314; Antonina Harbus, Th e Life of the Mind in Old English Poetry (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2002); Britt Mize, “Th e Representation of the Mind as an Enclosure in Old English Poetry,” Anglo-Saxon England, 35 (2006) 57–90; Michael J. Phillips, Heart, Mind, and Soul in Old English: A Semantic Study, unpublished PhD dissertation (University of Illinois, 1985). 3 Now Th e Dictionary of Old English Corpus in Electronic Form, ed. Antonette di Paolo Healey (Toronto: Dictionary of Old English Project, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto, 2004),
4 Th e Helsinki Corpus of English Texts (Helsinki: Department of English, University of Helsinki, 1991). 5 Although the Wulfstan canon is debatable, I followed Antonette di Paolo Healey and Richard L. Venezky, A Microfi che Concordance to Old English(Newark, Del.: University of Delaware, 1980). Th us, the following homilies (listed by their Cameron numbers) comprise the Wulfstan collection in my extended corpus: B2.1.1, B2.1.2, B2.1.3, B2.1.4, B2.1.5, B2.2.1, B2.2.2, B2.2.3, B2.2.4, B2.2.5, B2.2.6, B2.2.7, B2.2.8, B2.2.9, B2.2.10, B2.3.1, B2.3.2, B2.3.3, B2.3.4, B2.3.5, B2.3.6, B2.4.1, B2.4.2.A, B2.4.2.B, B2.4.2.C, B2.4.3. 6 Th e Cameron numbers of those chosen are B1.2.2, B1.2.8, B1.2.11, B1.2.15, B1.2.27 and B1.2.29. Ælfric, “Ælfric’s Second Series of ‘Catholic Homilies’: Th e Text and Manuscript Tradition,” ed. Malcolm Godden (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1970); Ælfric, Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies: Th e Second Series, ed. Malcolm Godden, Early English Text Society, s.s. 5 (London: Kegan Paul, 1979). 7 Ælfric, Homilies of Aelfric: A Supplementary Collection, ed. J. C. Pope, 2 vols., Early English Text Society 259, 260 (London: Kegan Paul, 1967–1968).