Anglo-Saxon Flashcards
Anglo-Saxon: talk generally about what we know about the texts of the period
There’s a vast amount of surviving old english material (far more than any other Germanic language of the period), but the survival rate for this period is still probably pretty low. Most of the canonical poems survive in only one copy, often damaged or incomplete. (There are four major manuscripts that contain most of the poetic corpus). The prose is mostly religious in one way or another, and Elaine would tell you that’s it’s seriously neglected simply because of stereotypes about literary quality. This is probably true: some of the sermons, in particular, are really good, if you’re into sermons, which nobody is these days. Very little material is classically influenced (more of it if you include the Church fathers in “classical,” but still less than the majority, I would say.) The strong vernacular tradition is unusual in Europe, and often attributed to Alfred the Great, who’s worth knowing a bit about (he has a passable wikipedia page).
Anglo-Norman: talk generally about this period & its literature
The second major period, which we can gloss over, because the anglo-centric quals list ignores, is the Anglo-Norman period. Lots of folks date this to about 1100, so that it’s clear that everyone did not suddenly start speaking French when Bill became king. Anglo-Norman starts to displace english as a court language, and English, which is already losing some of its more germanic features, starts to borrow lots of vocabulary from French. That said, Elaine has written about how it’s a truly multilingual culture, and she can cite examples of manuscripts that clearly presume a reader fluent in latin, french and English. Traditionally, this is considered a low point of English literary culture, however, and if you ignore the writing being done in Latin and Anglo-Norman (Marie de France, e.g.) that maybe holds. I don’t actually know a lot about this period, though. Maybe worth noting here (especially w/r/t Henry V) is that to whatever extent you think countries exist in this period, England and France are one and the same. This is also the period (13th C) when Wales is conquered—though again, we pretend “British” literature is both anglophone and English, so you can ignore that, apparently.
Middle English: talk generally about the transition from Anglo-Norman period to Middle English, what happens with the language, etc.
The middle English period, or whatever you want to call it, starts whenever Anglo-Norman gives way to middle English, which is a fuzzy line (law french, e.g., stick around for centuries). Chaucer, Langland, Lydgate, the Pearl Poet, etc etc. Literacy is beginning to move beyond the monastery (in the 1500s, Moore estimated that maybe 1/3 of the population could read—that’s an approximate recollection on my part, but it was surprisingly high) and by the 15th C, many manuscripts are being produced by professional scribes rather than monks. By the end of the period, London English no longer inflects nouns at all, which is important for non-linguists because variant forms are a common way of localizing manuscripts. London (“Chaucerian”) English, in general, is taking over, and by the end of the period, the Alliterative tradition has likewise given way to more Chaucerian, continental poetic forms. By this time, survival rates for manuscripts are much higher—or, at least, more are being produced. Many works survive in several copies, though some, of course, don’t, and we have a very incomplete stock of certain kinds of work (drama, for example).
Medieval generally: Discuss the inference from absence fallacy re: Medieval literature
Inference from absence: note that it’s poor form to assume anything about the middle ages from the lack of evidence. Not enough stuff survives to make a lack of anything significant. Gawain has only one manuscript, but we don’t know that that’s simply because the other 40 were lost—hyperbole; we can cautiously assume there were not 41 MSS, or we’d expect to have more than one. But there might have been a dozen. We know, e.g., that there were other heroic epics than Beowulf, but we don’t have any—the lack of MSS is not indicative of anything.
Medieval generally: Discuss originality in medieval literature
Originality:
The great medieval authorial skill is probably synthesis, rather than imagination or whatever you think it is in later periods. A huge amount of medieval writing is compilation, summary and cataloging. Sometimes this takes the form of outright quotation, but it’s often skillful reworkings. Authority (a word cognate with author, and more so in the period) is derived from association with establish authority to an extent that often seems strange. The standard line is that this makes medieval writing backward-looking rather than forward, which is probably an over-simplification. The great medieval authors are all highly innovative, creative thinkers, and plenty of new ideas get dreamed up. But for someone like Mallory, there’s no stigma about admitting that he gets all of his ideas from “the French Book;” it’s what he’s done with old material that makes his work interesting. Note, though, that since every scribe is going to change whatever they’re copying (it’s accepted practice to tidy up the grammar, spelling, even things like rhyme and meter) the idea of fidelity is probably much more nebulous thing. In answer to your direct question about classical sources, I’d say that classical sources are really a hallmark of the Renaissance, and that they’re relatively unusual throughout the medieval period.
Medievalism generally: discuss the details of manuscripts across this period
Manuscripts
Manuscripts of the period are written on parchment. By the time of Chaucer, paper is also an option. Parchment (animal skins) lasts forever; medieval rag paper is only slightly less durable—most medieval books, kept cool and dry, will outlast almost anything we make now (and that’s with as much as a thousand years already on them). Parchment is expensive, and while paper is cheaper, it’s still a huge expense. Large books represent literally hundreds of dead animals, and scholars like to note the bodily aspect of literally writing on skin. Books are written with a reed pen (earlier) or a quill, which needs constant sharpening (with a “pen knife”) and probably doesn’t last more than a day or two of devoted work. Writing itself is done in a “book hand” which is supposed to be easier to read, than other kinds of handwriting, though that isn’t always the case. Scripts change frequently, with time and location, and good paleographers (Elaine, e.g.) can sometimes (often?) localize them to specific monasteries or political centers, sometimes to the specific decade. A “rubricated” manuscript has red ink as well as black; this is a way to add titles, headings and so forth, and is very common. Annotations and marginalia are often partially in red and/or blue, and even if copied at the same time as the main text, may be in a different hand (most scribes had at least a couple of different hands they could write in). Illuminated manuscripts are technically ones with gold leaf; we often use the word synonymously with illustrated. In either case, the person doing the illustrations (this includes fancy capital letters and whatnot) is not the scribe. Binding was done by yet another person; the style of binding can help to identify the production of the book, though books were often rebound. Binding takes a surprising amount of waste material, and when books are taken apart (which is mostly considered bad curatorial practice now, but used to be common) we often find bits and pieces (“binding fragments”) of older books).
Later manuscripts, often produced in urban scriptoria rather than monasteries, tend away from decoration, and might just have some pen flourishes and doodles (which the scribe would probably do themselves). Universities, which drive demand for texts in the later period, lead to the production of absolute bare-bones texts without decoration. Woodblocks are used to print illustrations in some manuscripts (including before moveable type). Early printed books have many of the decorative features of manuscripts, because that’s what books were “supposed” to look like. Often, space was left for hand illustrations, and never filled in.
