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 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1 Th is article is a revised part of my unpublished doctoral thesis: “Th e Semantic Rivalry of Mod/Mood and Gemynd/Minde” (Budapest: Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem, 2005). 2 Malcolm R. Godden, “Anglo-Saxons on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 , 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Anglo-Saxon England, 35 (2006) 57–90; Michael J. Phillips, Heart, Mind, and Soul in Old English: A Semantic Study, unpublished PhD dissertation (University of Illinois, 1985). 3 Now Th e Dictionary of Old English Corpus in Electronic Form, ed.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), . 268 ágnes kiricsi for the prose, the texts used were the Old English prose texts selected for the Helsinki Corpus.4 Whereas the Helsinki Corpus oft en includes only parts of these, however, my corpus used complete texts. Further sources were added from the Toronto prose material, on the principle that as many diff erent text types, periods and dialects should be pres- ent as possible, ensuring both diachronic and diatopic coverage for my work. However, unnecessary duplication had to be avoided; for exam- ple, I did not include diff erent—but mainly identical— manuscript versions of the same sermon or psalter gloss. Accordingly, from the Lindisfarne Gospels I included only Luke, from the Rushworth Gospels only Matthew, and from the West-Saxon Gospels only John, based on the selection in the Helsinki Corpus. Meanwhile, the number of homilies would be disproportionately large if all the surviving texts had been included. Th erefore, a selection had to be made, keeping the balance of diff erent homily types. eTh Blickling and Vercelli Homilies, representing the Gallican tradition, form about half of all the homilies in the Old English corpus; the homilies of and Ælfric, of the Benedictine tradition, constitute the other half. To keep this bal- ance, all the twelve were included, as were all of Wulfstan’s homilies.5 Of Ælfric’s homilies, a selection was made based on that of the Helsinki Corpus and supplemented by homilies which seemed promising from the point of view of the two words examined. 6 Of the supplementary collection edited by Pope,7 I included all the eighteen texts from the second volume, that is, from Domenica V Post Pentecosten to the addition to Catholic Homilies 44, “Paulus scrip- sit ad Th esalonicenses,” with the exception of the two last texts (the

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).