Les Paroles Salomun ed. by Tony Hunt (review)

Best known for his editions of medieval vernacular medical texts, Tony Hunt has most recently turned his attention to the editing of Anglo-Norman religious material. Les Paroles Salomun, a text found in a single manuscript from the early 13th century, provides the Latin text of the Proverbs, followed by a verse-by-verse translation and commentary in Anglo-Norman. With the frequent inclusion of other Latin material within the commentary, the result is a diglossic text, moving between languages and authorities, with, as Hunt emphasizes, references to its sources. The title of Hunt’s volume is taken from line 5203 of the text, which is used to avoid confusion with editions of similar material, especially C. Claire Isoz’s edition, in the same series, of Les Proverbes de Salemon by Sanson de Nantuil (Anglo-Norman Texts, 44, 45, 50 (1988 — 94)). The Introduction gives codicological details of the manuscript preserving the text — Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 24862 — which has been the subject of two doctoral theses, although Hunt believes that neither provided a complete or accurate representation of the text. A brief comparison is made to Sanson de Nantuil’s version of the Paroles as well as to two anonymous versions (Ruth J. Dean, Anglo-Norman Literature, ANTS Occasional Publications, 3 (1999), §459 and §460). A partial transcription of sections drawn from one of these alternative versions (Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, MS 18253) is given in an appendix. This Anglo-Norman manuscript with a unique redaction of a prose commentary on the Proverbs deserves further study, as it contains previously unknown versions of Pecham’s Jerarchie (M. D. Legge, ‘John Pecham’s Jerarchie’, Medium Aevum, 11 (1942), 77–84) and the Mirour de seinte eglyse (edited by A. D. Wilshere, Anglo-Norman Texts, 40 (1982)) as well as some unedited material. The Introduction is completed by a summary of the linguistic particularities of the text, especially the influence of Latin on the orthography and vocabulary, comparing the language to ‘standard medieval French’. A definition of what is meant by this standard can be found in Ian Short’s Manual of Anglo-Norman (2nd edition, ANTS Occasional Publications, 8 (2013), p. 26 n. 18). The textual notes that follow the edition focus mainly on the sources used by the author/copyist, underlining the complex relationship between the edited text and the translation of Bede’s Super parabolas Salomonis allegorica expositio, the source of the bulk of the commentary. Hunt also notes, in particular, moments where the translator appears to render the Latin of the vulgate rather than the version provided in the text, although he does not hypothesize about what this may imply about the anonymous author. The edition is completed by a selective glossary of the text, which includes the Latin term translated where relevant.