The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: 7. MS E

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: 7. MS E

Edited by Susan Irvine
Series: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
Copyright Date: 2004
Edition: NED - New edition
Published by: Boydell and Brewer,
Pages: 354
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7722/j.ctt14brr2f
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  • Book Info
    The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: 7. MS E
    Book Description:

    This volume offers a new edition of the E-text of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, commonly known as the Peterborough Chronicle. The E-text is of enormous importance in Chronicle studies: in its early part it is the best representative of the Northern Recension of the Chronicle; in continuing up to the second half of the twelfth century, its span is by far the longest of all the versions. Even more than other verions of the Chronicle, it reflects transitions of vital interest to historians, linguists, and literary scholars. The E-text has not been edited in its entirety, except as a facsimile, for over a century. This semi-diplomatic edition offers a readable text with modern punctuation and capitalization. The interpolated material relating to Peterborough is clearly distinguished from the rest of the text. Indices of personal names, people-names, and place-names follow the text itself. The Introduction includes an account of the manuscript and a linguistic analysis of the E-text. The E-text cannot of course be studied in isolation. This volume is part of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Collaborative Series and with its publication the Series now includes editions of the main texts through from A to F. A substantial section of the Introduction to the volume is devoted to a detailed discussion of E's complex textual relationships with the other versions of the Chronicle, and also with other relevant documents such as Peterborough Charters and twelfth-century Latin chronicles. Dr SUSAN IRVINE is Senior Lecturer in the Department of English, University College, London.

    eISBN: 978-1-84615-218-4
    Subjects: Bibliography

Table of Contents

  1. Front Matter
    (pp. i-iv)
  2. Table of Contents
    (pp. v-vi)
  3. PREFACE
    (pp. vii-viii)
    Susan Irvine
  4. Plate
    (pp. ix-x)
  5. INTRODUCTION
    • THE MANUSCRIPT
      (pp. xiii-xxx)

      The version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle known as E is preserved in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Laud Misc. 636, and consists of annals for 60 BC to AD 1154.¹ It is the only extant version of the Chronicle which extends into the twelfth century (indeed it covers over seventy years more than any other version), and it therefore offers important evidence for the continuation of writing in English in the century after the Norman Conquest.²

      The medieval origin of the manuscript is Peterborough. The most compelling reason for assigning it to Peterborough is its content. The E-text includes a number...

    • THE TEXT
      (pp. xxxi-cii)

      The annal-numbers in E generally conform to those found in other manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. There are, however, a number of errors in the annal-numbers, leading in some cases to considerable distortion in their relation to the events they record.

      (i) Various errors were subsequently corrected by the first (main) scribe. The following annal-numbers have been subject to scribal correction: 22 (corrected from .xiii.by insertion of x and erasure of the thirdi); 140 (corrected by an erasure between thecand x of .cxl.); 411 (corrected from .cccxi.by insertion ofc); 434 (corrected from .cccxxxiiii. by...

    • LANGUAGE
      (pp. ciii-clxvi)

      The language of the E-text of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle provides fascinating testimony to the ways the English language developed in its period of transition from Old to Middle English. It offers a wide spectrum of linguistic forms, ranging from the mainly standard late West Saxon of those annals up to 1121 which are copied from earlier versions of the Chronicle to the early Middle English, distinctively East Midland in dialect, which characterizes the annals making up the First and Final Continuations of the manuscript.

      This examination of the language of the E-text of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is divided into sections...

    • EDITORIAL CONVENTIONS
      (pp. clxvii-clxx)
    • BIBLIOGRAPHY
      (pp. clxxi-clxxviii)
  6. TEXT OF MS. E
    (pp. 1-138)
  7. Indices
  8. Back Matter
    (pp. 175-175)