Manuscript Variation in Multiple-Recension Old English Poetic Texts The Technical Problem and Poetical Art
Creators: name: O'Donnell, Daniel Paul
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 1996
Subjects: old english
scribal practice
literacy
anglo-saxon england
textual studies
orality
transitional literacy

description: Twenty-six poems and fragments of poems are known to have survived the Anglo-Saxon period in more than one witness. These include poems from a variety of genres andmaterial contexts: biblical narrative, religious poetry, riddles, charms, liturgical translations, proverbs, a preface and an epilogue, occasional pieces like “Durham,” and historical poems like the Battle of Brunanburh. Their witnesses survive in three of the four principal manuscripts of Old English poetry, in the margins and blank spaces of manuscripts devoted to Latin texts, as constituents of vernacular prose histories and translations, and even in one case carved onto the face of a stone cross.

The importance of these texts to students of Old English poetry lies in the evidence they offer us of how Anglo-Saxon scribes approached the task of copying verse. The majority of Old English poems are found as single copies preserved in one or another of four principal codices: the Beowulf Manuscript, the Junius Manuscript, the Exeter Book, and the Vercelli Book. As a result, editors and critics of Old English poetry have been forced to rely to an extraordinary degree on the relatively few scribes responsible for copying these manuscripts for their knowledge both of the texts themselves and of more general aspects of Old English poetic art. By allowing us to compare the work of two or more Anglo-Saxon scribes as they copy the same piece of poetry, the multiply attested poems provide us with what seems to be an ideal opportunity for determining how these scribes worked – the extent to which they preserved the text of their exemplars, or, if they were more willing to intervene, the nature and extent of the variants they introduced.<br>
The trouble, however, is that the poems which survive in more than one witness do not offer a consistent testimony. Some poems – the West-Saxon ylda-recension of “Cædmon’s Hymn” and the Metrical Epilogue to Alfred’s translation of the Pastoral Care among them – exhibit almost no variation among their surviving witnesses apart from the occasional graphic error and minor orthographic or dialectal difference. Others – such as Soul and Body I and II, Solomon and Saturn I, and the common portion of Daniel and Azarias – on the other hand, show far more and far more significant textual variation. In addition to mechanical errors and dialectal variants similar to those found among the more conservatively transmitted poems, these texts, which include all five multiply-attested poems with witnesses in the four principal anthologies of Old English verse, also show variants which have a far greater effect on metre, sense, or syntax, including differences in the use of case, differences in the choice and arrangement of individual words within the line, and even differences in the arrangement and choice of individual half-lines and lines. 

In the past, studies of the multiply attested poems have concentrated on describing and determining the origins of individual types of variants or the variation within individual poems or groups of poems. Variants or poems which do not fit the theory being expounded have been seen primarily as “exceptions” or have been used to set the (chronological or other) boundaries of the theory being proposed.

It is possible, however, to go farther than this. For not only do poems like the Battle of Brunanburh, the common text of the Paris and Eadwine Psalters,  Daniel and Azarias, Soul and Body I and II and Solomon and Saturn I show different amounts and types of variation, they are also different types of poems, copied in different contexts and for different reasons. In such circumstances, it seems reasonable to assume that the scribes responsible for copying these poems approached their work with different ideas as to the nature of the task at hand. 

It is the thesis of this dissertation that poems found in similar contexts will show similar amounts and types of textual variation. On the basis of a complete catalogue of the substantive textual variation exhibited by the witnesses to all metrically regular Old English poems known to have survived the Anglo-Saxon period in insular copies, I argue that the corpus can be divided into three main contextual groups. 


	Poems which, like the common text of Psalms 90:16.1-95:2.1, have been copied as glosses and translations in primarily Latin manuscripts will be found to show similarly low levels of significant substantive textual variation. As I demonstrate, this group can be extended to include all other metrically regular poems not copied as constituents of vernacular prose framing texts or as part of an anthology or compilation. 
	Poems which, like the Battle of Brunanburh, are found as fixed constituents of larger framing texts, on the other hand, will show a different pattern of textual variation. While most witnesses to these poems show relatively few substantive variants, certain witnesses are far more innovative. As I demonstrate, the differences between these poems can be shown in all but one case to be related to the pattern of variation found in the surrounding prose. Scribes who show themselves to have been conservative copyists of the framing texts in which these poems are found also produce the most conservative copies of the poems themselves; those who show themselves to be more willing to introduce substantive variation into their poetic texts, on the other hand, also almost invariably produce the most innovative copies of the accompanying frame. 
	Finally, poems which, like Soul and Body I and II, the common text of Daniel and Azarias, and Solomon and Saturn I, survive with at least one witness in a compilation or anthology show a third pattern of textual variation. These poems are frequently excerpted from or interpolated into other texts and exhibit a variation which, in contrast to that found in the other two groups, appears at times to reflect the intelligent engagement of the reviser with the poem. 


The argument presented here has some important implications for our understanding of Anglo-Saxon poetic practice. <br>
In the first place, it suggests that Old English poetry surviving in more than one witness may not be as representative of the general body of Old English verse as has been generally assumed. Although the multiply attested poetry appears at first glance to represent a broad range of styles and genres, on closer inspection it is clear that certain types of manuscript contexts were more likely to produce multiple copies than others. In the general corpus of Old English poetry, for example, 65% of the approximately 31,000 lines of surviving verse is preserved in the four main ‘Poetic Codices’; in the corpus of multiply attested poetry, however, these same codices supply less than a third of the surviving lines. Poems found as fixed constituents of vernacular prose framing works, on the other hand, are over-represented in the corpus of multiply attested verse. They account for approximately 27% of the lines found in more than one witness, versus about 9% of all surviving Old English poetry. 

Secondly, the observation that Anglo-Saxon scribes copied differently depending on the context in which they were working suggests that they may have read – and perhaps even composed – these texts with different artistic expectations as well. That metrical, syntactical, and lexical differences exist between poems like Beowulf and poems like the metrical translation of the Psalms is obvious. 

But other differences may also exist. As I argue, poems found in the anthologies differ from those in other contexts in that they are frequently transmitted as fragments rather than as coherent and discrete wholes. This, coupled with the fact that they appear to have travelled independently of any specific context or group of texts suggests that they also may have been seen as a body of verse which compilers and copyists of Old English poetry felt free to adapt, excerpt, or interpolate at will.
description: Description adapted from the introduction.