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Beowulf and the Blickling Homilies and some Textual Notes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Carleton Brown*
Affiliation:
New York University

Extract

Richard Morris, in editing the Blickling Homilies, called attention to a passage in the xviith Homily which presents striking resemblances to the description of the mere of Grendel in Beowulf, “of which [in his opinion] it is probably a direct reminiscence.” Though almost sixty years have passed since this resemblance was pointed out, during this whole period it has received scant attention from students of Old English, being either ignored altogether or dismissed with only brief discussion.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 53 , Issue 4 , December 1938 , pp. 905 - 916
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1938

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References

Note 1 in page 905 Blickling Homilies, EETS Orig. Ser. 73, p. vii.

Note 2 in page 905 Anglia xxxvii, 185–187, and Beowulf, 3rd ed., pp. 183 f.

Note 3 in page 906 Kommentar zum Beowulf (Heidelberg, 1932), p. 164. In the passage quoted the phrase “In der Vision des Paulus” is obviously an error for “In der Blick.-Hom.”

Note 4 in page 906 C.H.E.L. i, Chap, vii (New York), p. 127. Westlake appends a footnote: “Cf. the Provençal.”

Note 5 in page 906 Texts and Studies, ii, No. 3 (Camb. Univ. Press, 1893), pp. 11-42.

Note 6 in page 906 Visio sancti Pauli: the History of the Apocalypse, together with nine texts: Studies and Documents, ed Kirsopp Lake and Silva Lake, iv (Lond. 1936), pp. 131–147.

Note 7 in page 906 Visio Pauli (Halle, 1885), p. 76. James (pp. 4–7) gives a convenient table comparing the contents of his text and those printed by Brandes.

Note 8 in page 907 Silverstein, op. cit., p. 9.

Note 9 in page 907 Op. cit., p. 60.—See also the section on The Hanging Sinners (Redactions β ii, iii, γ iv, v, vii, viii): “(2) It adds the fiery trees at the gates of Hell on which the souls are suspended” (p. 69); also the remark on p. 71: “The fiery trees at the gates of Hell are wholly new with the Redactions of Paul.

Note 10 in page 909 “The Haunted Mere in Beowulf,” PMLA, xxvii, 208–245, and Beowulf and Epic Tradition (1928), pp. 183 ff.

Note 11 in page 910 H. M. Chadwick, The Growth of Literature, i, 338.