Reading, Literacy, and the Writing of History in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of the Ohio State University By Thomas Arlin Bredehoft, B.A., M. A. The Ohio State University 1994 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Nicholas Howe Me deetig Noe Andrea Lunsford Advisor, Department of EnglishCopyright by Thomas Arlin Bredehoft 1994DEDICATION This work is dedicated to King Alfred the Great and to all the generations of scholars and writers in the eleven centuries since his flourishing who have preserved for us those Old English texts which he decreed "most necessary for all men to know."ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS L wish to express my gratitude to those who made this study financially possible: The Graduate School of the Ohio State University; which granted me a Graduate Student Alumni Research Award; the Rhetoric and Composition Program in the Department of English, which funded me through the Academic Challenge Grant; the Department of English, which awarded me a Summer Fellowship, and the Ohio State University, which awarded me a Presidential Fellowship I want to thank those who made this work intellectually possible: Nicholas Howe, whose tireless energy in reading, rereading, and simply talking with me has been a constant source of stimulation, encouragement, and inspiration; Alan Brown and Andrea Lunsford, whose work on this and other projects has likewise shaped my own; my parents, whose love of all things old and the desire to write about them inspired my own; and numberless other scholars and teachers throughout twenty-five years of formal education and thirty years informal. 1 am pleased to owe thanks to the many friends who have made living through this project not only bearable, but enjoyable: foremost among these is Rosemary Hathaway, whose affection has been unflagging, but also these others, Michael Ritchie, Don Yarman, Karla Armbruster, Jim Brown, John and Karen Kruzan, Bryan Luther, Mark Suhovecky, Lori Mathis, Amy Goodburn, Carrie Leverenz, Dan Pinti, and Donna LeCourt. iiiVITA March 20, 1964 Born, Lima, OH June, 1986 B. A. Cornell University, Ithaca NY 1986-1988 Teaching Assistant Department of Physics Ohio State University, Columbus, OH June, 1990 M. A. English Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 1990-1994 Teaching Assistant Department of English Ohio State University, Columbus, OH FIELD OF STUDY Major Field: EnglishTABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS VITA LIST OF TABLES INTRODUCTION CHAPTER I, King Alffed, the Chronicle, and Anglo-Saxon Literate Culture Il. Cynewulf, Cyneheard, and Reading Anglo-Saxon Prose Narrative III. The Genealogies of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle IV. The Poems of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle V. Latin in the Chronicle and the Latin Chronicles VL. Conclusions APPENDICES A. The Texts of Annals 755, 871, and 878 B, The Genealogical Passages of the West Saxon Regnal Table C. The Texts of the Chronicle Genealogies D. The Non-Canonical Chronicle Poems BIBLIOGRAPHY 31 54 88 123 161 187 197 216 218 229 241LIST OF TABLES TABLE PAGE 1. The Distribution of Genealogical Passages in the Chronicle's Common Stock 110 2. Poetry in the Chronicle Manuscripts. 128 3. Print-Biased Features in Editions of the Chronicle 189 viINTRODUCTION Reading the Chronicle: 891 to the Present Undertaking a re-examination of the ways in which scholars and editors have read the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a formidable task, involving one in the reading and interpretation of dozens (if not hundreds) of texts written over a span of eleven hundred years and more. There are Old English and Latin texts to consider, as well as the accumulated scholarship of over four hundred years of Chronicle study. There are printed texts, facsimiles, and the manuscripts themselves to be read, not to mention reconstructions and editions of other manuscripts long since destroyed. There is prose, some pithy, some prolix, and poetry, the Anglo-Saxons’ record of British history from Julius Caesar's invasion to the Danish and Norman conquests and beyond, If, in the process of reading such a diversity of materials, one is tempted to focus upon the act of reading itself, in its own multiformity, surely one can be forgiven. The materials demand it, in fact. If the Chronicle is where the Anglo-Saxons told themselves their own story from the beginning, in the history of Chronicle scholarship Anglo- Saxonists can find the story of themselves. By rereading our own story, though, we can rediscover our own illusions, about ourselves and about the Anglo-Saxons, and rediscover a way to read the Anglo-Saxons’ story as they would have wanted us to.The Texts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Although we apply the convenient title "the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" to the manuscripts which make up the Chronicle, it can be a mistake to allow ourselves to think that the Chronicle can be usefully considered as a unified, monolithic text, as the inclusive nature of the title might suggest. Each of the six main surviving manuscripts of the Chronicle stands as part of a separate tradition, in some way, as all six were copied and updated at various times throughout the two and a half centuries which passed between the earliest work on the Parker Chronicle in the 890s and the writing of the final entries of the Peterborough Chronicle in 1154. A genetic relationship connects all six texts, however: each is based upon a compilation dating from about the year 891 or 892, the Chronicle's so-called Common Stock. Additionally, there are apparent sub-families within the manuscripts, tying together the A and G mss, the B and C mss, and the D, E, and F mss; however, even within these sub-groups, each version to some extent makes its own additions, revisions, and deletions.! Besides these main manuscripts, however, there are a series of other related texts which must be considered when examining the Chronicle: those historical texts which make use of information from the Chronicle in their Latin histories. Earliest among these is Asser's biography of Alfred, the Vita Alfredi, written approximately contemporaneously with the compilation of the Common Stock. In the late tenth century, the aldorman /Ethelweard's Latin chronicle likewise relied upon a version of the Chronicle, as did the twelfth century productions of William of Malmesbury, Simeon of Durham, Henry of Huntingdon, and Florence of Worchester, as well as the anonymous Annals of St. Neots. The Chronicle, then, was clearly a well-known and much relied upon resource for historical information in Anglo-Saxon England, and continued to be used as | The alphabetic sigla conventionally assigned to the various manuscripts of the Chronicle will be described below.such well into the Norman period. The interaction between the vernacular history embodied in the Chronicle and the Latin histories which relied upon it is surely one of the most remarkable features of the whole Chronicle tradition, as it utterly reverses the hierarchy which we are most accustomed to assuming and asserting for the Middle Ages in general--the hierarchy which places Latin texts as earlier and more authoritative than vernacular texts Indeed, the history of the Chronicle manuscripts themselves is in some ways as fascinating as the historical information about Anglo-Saxon England which they contain. Of the six central manuscripts, five of them show signs of having, at one time or another, been added to and written in almost contemporaneously with the events described. However, before any detailed discussion of the Chronicle and its manuscripts can take place, the manuscripts themselves must be described in some detail. The make-up and history of each of the Chronicle manuscripts has been carefully approached and investigated by scholars over the years; in the paragraphs which follow, I am particularly indebted to the detailed analyses of Plummer, Ker, Bately, and Dumville. The Parker Chronicle (contained in CCCC 173), named after Archbishop Matthew Parker, who bequeathed it to Cambridge's Corpus Christi College at his death in 1575, is conventionally denoted ms A. Within this volume, however, are other texts, specifically, the Acts of Lanfranc; Laws of Alfred and Ine; lists of popes, archbishops, and bishops; and an originally separate volume, apparently of the eighth century, containing Sedulius's Carmen Paschale and a number of brief Latin pieces. The Parker manuscript's history is particularly remarkable, as its record of addenda and deletions attests to two centuries of use as a living historical document. In fact the complicated textual history of the Parker Chronicle has occasioned a great deal of scholarly debate, and remarkably little consensus. This earliest remaining manuscript of the Chronicle, written in and altered sporadically over a span of nearly two centuries, is unparalleled among Anglo-Saxon texts for the