Palimpsests and the Literary Imagination of Medieval England
Subtitle: Collected Essays
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 2011
Place of publication: New York, USA; Basingstoke, UK
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 267
ISBN-13: 9780230100268
Description: "Witnesses to the disappearance of a text, palimpsest manuscripts bear the marks of their own genesis, for their original inscription was rubbed out and written over on the same parchment. Erasure is a prerequisite of reinscription; destruction paves the way for renewal. Thus the palimpsest is an image of the processes of revision and accretion which shape medieval literary production. This collection explores analogies of erasure and rewriting observed in editorial and literary practices underlying the production of texts from medieval England. Whether palimpsests are the primary focus of study or serve as a metaphor for various phenomena of loss and accumulation, all the essays investigate the process of reinscription. "--Provided by publisher.
Table of contents: label: Leo Carruthers
title: "Homage to André Crépin, membre de l’Institut, Honorary OBE"
pagenum: xvii-xviii.; label: Raeleen Chai-Elsholz
title: “Introduction: Palimpsests and ‘Palimpsestuous’ Reinscriptions”
pagenum: 1-17.; title: Abstract: This introduction analyzes the term “palimpsest” in relation to the various types of artifacts of cultural production discussed in the volume’s essays.; label: Part I
title: PERMANENCE AND IMPERMANENCE OF WRITING ON THE PAGE; label: Adrian Papahagi
title: “An Anglo-Saxon Palimpsest from Fleury: Orléans, Bibliothèque Municipale MS 342 (290)”
pagenum: 21-33.; title: Abstract: This essay examines an Orléans manuscript (s. x/xi) against the background of exchanges between Fleury and Anglo-Saxon abbeys, and suggests it was palimpsested in Fleury.; label: Peter A. Stokes
title: “Recovering Anglo-Saxon Erasures: Some Questions, Tools, and Techniques”
pagenum: 35-60.; title: Abstract: This essay provides practical instruction in enhancing digital images of damaged or palimpsested manuscripts, encompassing basic principles, hands-on techniques, and the ethics of enhancement.; label: Jane Roberts
title: “Some Psalter Glosses in Their Immediate Context”
pagenum: 61-79.; title: Abstract: This essay looks closely at three Anglo-Saxon glossed psalters and how the palimpsestic layers of gloss and text, language and layout, speak to the meditative reader.; label: Paul E. Szarmach
title: “The Palimpsest and Old English Homiletic Composition”
pagenum: 81-94.; title: Abstract: This essay proposes that the palimpsest offers a way to understand the composition techniques of Old English homilists, notably Ælfric, Wulfstan, and the anonymous tradition.; label: Sharon M. Rowley
title: “‘Ic Beda’. . . ‘Cwæð Beda’: Reinscribing Bede in the Old English Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum”
pagenum: 95-113.; title: Abstract: This essay examines literal and metaphorical palimpsests in the OEHE, emphasizing the strategies through which Bede’s translators represent Bede’s voice in direct and indirect discourse.; label: Florence Bourgne
title: “Vernacular Engravings in Late Medieval England”
pagenum: 115-136.; title: Abstract: Anxious late-medieval vernacular authors saturated their texts with references to engraved writings. These often refer to inscriptions on wax tablets, a fragile albeit professional medium.; label: Part II
title: IMPERMANENCE AND ACCUMULATION IN THE LITERARY IMAGINATION; label: Leo Carruthers
title: “Rewriting Genres: Beowulf as Epic Romance”
pagenum: 139-155.; title: Abstract: Investigation of its historical matter in parallel with its generic classifications shows Beowulf to be a literary palimpsest anticipating the historical novel.; label: Gila Aloni
title: “Palimpsestic Philomela: Reinscription in Chaucer’s “Legend of Philomela”
pagenum: 157-173.; title: Abstract: In rewriting Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book VI, Chaucer partially erases his source to make room for his own “Legend of Philomela.”; label: Claire Vial
title: “The Middle English Breton Lays and the Mists of Origin”
pagenum: 175-191.; title: Abstract: Awareness of generic ancestry offers evidence of the palimpsestuous nature of the “true” Middle English Breton lays.; label: Colette Stévanovitch
title: “Enquiries into the Textual History of the Seventeenth-Century Sir Lambewell (London, British Library, Additional 27897)”
pagenum: 193-204.; title: Abstract: The mid-seventeenth-century romance Sir Lambewell incorporates accretions from various periods, which reflect the tastes of various audiences and coexist as in a palimpsest.; label: Jean-Marc Elsholz
title: “Elucidations: Bringing to Light the Aesthetic Underwriting of the Matière de Bretagne in John Boorman’s Excalibur”
pagenum: 205-226.; title: Abstract: Boorman’s film Excalibur enacts medieval theories of light that form the underwriting of successive layers of the Arthurian romance tradition.