The Genesis of Books: Studies in the Scribal Culture of Medieval England in Honour of A. N. Doane edited by Matthew T. Hussey and John D. Niles (review)

The cohort of Anglo-Saxonists who took their professional degree or their first job in the boom-boom 1960s, and even perhaps survived the subsequent collapse of the job market, are now approaching the omega point of their careers. Not too long from now, some mentor somewhere will suggest to a promising doctoral student that the time is ripe for a study of that cohort’s accomplishments and achievements. The dissertation might have a sociological twist and very possibly exude the odor of a skeptical postmodernism, as is the fashion in some quarters. That old-time philology will not fare well, for, at least in North America, the practitioners are few, and formalism [a.k.a “New Criticism”] will merit the attention usually devoted to an antique, though some still practice this dark art in clandestine ways. A. N. “Nick” Doane will surely be one of these key scholars, and indeed with this volume of twelve essays and substantial introduction, the first collegial celebration of his work has begun. Matthew T. Hussey and John D. Niles edit and contribute to the volume honoring Doane, which focuses on early English manuscripts and texts. Doane is arguably a major defender of scribes and scribal culture, and this collection honors this theme. This issue of scribal authority is but one of the many interrelated themes put forth and sketched by the editors in their thoughtful opening.

Michelle Brown opens the rich menu of essays by offering a paper on the “eastwardness” of things or the relationships between the Christian culture of the Middle East and Insular art. Direct and even indirect connections are difficult to document and explain. Disjointed notices of specific instances often elude some conceptual overview. Travel—in both directions—provides specific instances, for example. Northumbrian churchmen travelled to Rome, which was a clear transit point, and returned with artifacts and ideas. Mediterranean churchmen, famously Theodore of Tarsus and Abbot Hadrian, came to Canterbury. Brown offers no easy formula or thesis for the “eastwardness of things,” readily agreeing that east-west practices and perceptions coming down through the centuries might have been coincidental. Brown’s review of the evidence and the state of the question provides an authoritative basis for future research.

Katherine Lynch discusses three charms against a dwarf (wiþ dweorh) found in London, British Library, MS Harley 585, also known as Lacnunga (Remedies). She argues that we should understand these charms as “text-events” produced by a scribe in an Anglo-Saxon manuscript. The physical reality of the medieval manuscript can be compared to an oral performance. Lynch, after a detailed study of the three charms, concludes that Charm 3 preserves a written record of an oral text. The interplay of orality and textuality draws its general inspiration from Nick Doane, but draws on Paul Zumthor as well and, by way of Mark Amodio, John Miles Foley: “[T]he vernacular manuscript culture of the English Middle Ages are … texts that speak to readers and listeners who hear” (p. 67).

Consideration of a broad synthesis and a set of charms yields to the study of a personal letter from the reign of Edward the Elder (d. 924). Known as the Font-hill Letter, the document seems to have been the product of dictation, showing a personal style and rhetoric even as a legal record of a dispute of some twenty years. The authorship of the letter is in dispute. The early West-Saxon language contains forms that challenge understanding. Niles suggests a narrative where a semi-professional scribe could have garbled the key passage out of ignorance of language pertaining to cattle theft or through a mistake in the “threefold chain of transmission from spoken word to wax tablets to vellum” (p. 94...