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Affective language, especially alliterating qualifiers, in Ælfric's Life of St Alban

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Ruth Waterhouse
Ruth Waterhouse
Affiliation:
Macquarie University, New South Wales
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Extract

It is basic to Ælfric's style in the Lives of Saints that he does not aim at word-for-word translation of his Latin sources; ‘nec ubique transtulimus verbum exs verbo, sed sensum ex sensu’ is his governing principle in the Lives, as in his homilies. This is so, for instance, in a brief example from the Life of St Oswald, when Ælfric is recounting some of the miracles associated with the place where Oswald fell in battle; he speaks of the horseman who passed by, Bede has at this point: ‘Tulit itaque de puluere terrae illius secum inligans in linteo’, and the Old English Bede reads: ‘Genom þa þære moldan dæl in þære stowe, gebond in his sceate.’

Type
Research Article
Information
Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 7 , December 1978 , pp. 131 - 148
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

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References

page 131 note 1 The Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church. The First Part, containing the Sermones Catholic!, or Homilies of Ælfric, ed. Thorpe, Benjamin, 2 vols. (London, 1844–1846) 1, 1.Google Scholar

page 131 note 2 Ælfric's lives of Saints, ed. Skeat, Walter W., Early Eng. Text Soc. o.s. 76, 82, 94 and 114 (London, 1881–1900)Google Scholar, no. xxvi.

page 131 note 3 Bede' Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. Colgrave, Bertram and Mynors, R. A. B. (Oxford, 1969), p. 244.Google Scholar

page 131 note 4 The Old English Version of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. Miller, Thomas EETS o.s. 95, 96, 110 and in (London, 1890–1898), 180,Google Scholar lines 18–19. Cited henceforth as OEB.

page 132 note 1 The few border-line characters are usually those who first appear as heathen and are then converted by the saint.

page 132 note 2 Cf. Clemoes, Peter, ‘Ælfric’, Continuations and Beginnings, ed. Stanley, E. G. (London, 1966), p. 193Google Scholar. I am grateful to Professor Clemoes for much constructive criticism of an earlier draft of this paper.

page 132 note 3 E.g. by Gerould, G. H. in ‘Abbot Ælfric'slsquo;sRhythmical Prose’,MP 22 (1925), 353–66Google Scholar; Bethurum, Dorothy in ‘The Form of Ælfric'sLives of Saints’ SP 29 (1932), 515–33Google Scholar; Mclntosh, Angus in ‘Wulfstan's Prose’,Proc. of the Brit. Academy 35 (1949), 109–42Google Scholar; Peter Clemoes in‘Ælfric’(see preceding note); Pope, John C., Homilies of Ælfric: a Supplementary Collection, EETS 259 and 260 (London, 1967–1968), 105–36Google Scholar; Frances Lipp, Randall in ‘Ælfric's Old English Prose Style’, SP 66 (1969), 689–718Google Scholar; and Sherman Kuhn, M. in ‘Cursus in Old English: Rhetorical Ornament or Linguistic Phenomenon?;’, Speculum 47 (1972), 188–206.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 132 note 4 E.g. Ott, J. H. in Über die Quellen der Heiligenleben in Ælfrics Lives of Saints (Halle, 1892)Google Scholar; Loomis, C. Grant in ‘Further Sources of Ælfric's Saints' Lives’, Harvard Stud. andNotes in Philol.andL.it. 13 (1931), 1–8Google Scholar; and Clark, Cecily in Ælfric and Abbo’, ESts 49 (1968), 30–6Google Scholar. Middleton's, Anne article, ‘Ælfric's Answerable Style: the Rhetoric of the Alliterative Prose’, Stud. in Med. Culture 4.1 (1973), 83–91Google Scholar, came into my hands for the first time only when the present article was in proof. I find that she and I are in fundamental agreement, although she is concerned more with how the rhythmic style serves the synthesizing needs of æElfric‘s thought, while I am concerned more with its effect on his audience. ‘ 1Ott, , Quellen, pp. 7–8Google Scholar. I cite iElfric's Old English in the first column, Bede's Latin in the second and OEB in the third. In the tables and in the rest of the article the Bede readings are from 1.6–8 (ed. Colgrave and Mynors, pp. 26–34) and the OEB ones from pp. 32–42 of Miller's edition.

page 134 note 1 Further instances are to albanes buse (34), where Bede has ad tugurium martyris and OEB to þæs martyres buse; to ðam martyre (89), where Bede has beatissimi confessoris ac martyris and OEB ðæs eadigan martyres; and mid him (102), where Bede has pro martyre and OEB mid ðone martyr. In 35, 93 and 110 Ælfric gives Alban's name without qualifying title, where Bede adds the title sanctus, and OEB follows suit.

page 134 note 2 Cecily Clark, however, in ‘Ælfric and Abbo’, shows how important it can be.

page 135 note 1 It is found also in 85 in alliterative position as a nominal for which there is nothing comparable in and leddon ðone balgan to beheafdigenne. Bede Cumque ad mortem duceretur OEB Mid ð;y he þa to deaðe gelaeded wæs

page 142 note 1 Hurt, James (Ælfric (New York, 1972), p. 71)Google Scholar comments that Ælfric uses a few ‘stock phrases over and over’ to describe the persecuting emperors.

page 142 note 2 Three of the b group items have the noun ge leaf an, which adds to the impression of the‘ stock’ phrase; cf. the a phrases in table IB.

page 144 note 1 See RWaterhouse, uth, ‘Ælfric's Use of Discourse in some Saints' Lives’, ASE 5 (1976), 83–103Google Scholar, esp. 83–4.

page 144 note 2 The noun deoflum occurs in 70, translating iaemonibus (OEB deoflum), but does not carry the alliteration.

page 144 note 3 See above, p. 140 and n. c.

page 147 note 1 Above, p. 133.

page 148 note 1 See above, p. 135.