The Review of English Studies Advance Access published online on June 25, 2009
The Review of English Studies, doi:10.1093/res/hgp050
© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press 2009; all rights reserved
Dunstan, Æthelwold, and Isidorean Exegesis in Old English Glosses: Oxford, Bodleian Library Bodley 319
Simon Fraser University
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Abstract |
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Oxford, Bodleian Library Bodley 319 is one of the three manuscripts written by the scribe of the Exeter Book of Old English poetry in the later tenth century; it was originally entirely in Latin, but an Old English gloss was added to the last chapter in the eleventh century. This paper argues that the gloss shares lexical and stylistic features with a group of Old English texts recently linked to the important Benedictine reformer and author, Æthelwold of Winchester. This affiliation with these Old English texts, especially the Royal Psalter (London, British Library Royal 2.B.v), suggests that the copy of Isidore's De fide catholica in Bodley 319 was studied in the intellectual circles of Æthelwold and Dunstan in the decades following their time together in Glastonbury in the mid-tenth century. Like the Royal Psalter, the Bodley 319 gloss reveals an experimental foray into reproducing the complexities of Latin typological thought in the vernacular. Furthermore, the connections between Bodley 319 and this specific intellectual and literary milieu can shed light on the earlier history of Bodley 319 and perhaps its sister manuscripts, London, Lambeth Palace 149 and the Exeter Book. Drawing a connection between the three manuscripts—including one of the most important Anglo-Saxon poetic collections—and Dunstan and Æthelwold provides a new context for understanding the emergence of the literary vernacular in the later tenth and early eleventh centuries.