Beowulf, like The Iliad and The Odyssey, is a foundational work of Western literature that originated in mysterious circumstances. In The Transmission of Beowulf, Leonard Neidorf addresses philological questions that are fundamental to the study of the poem. Is Beowulf the product of unitary or composite authorship? How substantially did scribes alter the text during its transmission, and how much time elapsed between composition and preservation?
Neidorf answers these questions by distinguishing linguistic and metrical regularities, which originate with the Beowulf poet, from patterns of textual corruption, which descend from copyists involved in the poem’s transmission. He argues, on the basis of archaic features that pervade Beowulf and set it apart from other Old English poems, that the text preserved in the sole extant manuscript (ca. 1000) is essentially the work of one poet who composed it circa 700. Of course, during the poem’s written transmission, several hundred scribal errors crept into its text. These errors are interpreted in the central chapters of the book as valuable evidence for language history, cultural change, and scribal practice. Neidorf’s analysis reveals that the scribes earnestly attempted to standardize and modernize the text’s orthography, but their unfamiliarity with obsolete words and ancient heroes resulted in frequent errors. The Beowulf manuscript thus emerges from his study as an indispensible witness to processes of linguistic and cultural change that took place in England between the eighth and eleventh centuries. An appendix addresses J. R. R. Tolkien’s Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary, which was published in 2014. Neidorf assesses Tolkien’s general views on the transmission of Beowulf and evaluates his position on various textual issues.
Leonard Neidorf is Professor of English at Nanjing University and a former Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows. He is the editor of The Dating of Beowulf: A Reassessment and coeditor of Old English Philology: Studies in Honour of R. D. Fulk.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction1. The Duration of Transmission2. The Detection of Scribal Error3. Meter and Alliteration4. Probabilistic Reasoning5. General Prefatory Remarks2. Language History1. Diachronic Variation2. Dialectal Variation3. Syntactic Misconstruction4. Trivialization5. Interpolation3. Cultural Change1. Obliteration of Personal Names2. Obliteration of Ethnic Names3. Erroneous Spacing4. Scribal Self-Correction5. Chronological Significance4. Scribal Behavior1. The Lexemic Theory2. Competing Theories3. Variation in Parallel Texts4. The Four Poetic Codices5. Theory and Evidence5. Conclusion1. The Unity of Beowulf2. Linguistic Regularities3. Methodological Considerations4. Textual Criticism5. Manuscript ContextAppendix: J. R. R. Tolkien's Beowulf Textual Criticism
What People are Saying About This
Paul Cavill
Written in a clear, assertive style.... this book will reorient Beowulf studies. It mounts a coherent argument for the unity and antiquity of Beowulf.... It absolves the scribes of carelessness and recovers the poem from their excessive carefulness. It illuminates the transmission of Beowulf powerfully and cogently.
Carole Hough
This is a truly paradigm-shifting book. Leonard Neidorf swims against the tide of much recent Beowulf scholarship, but his case is supported by such a compelling weight of evidence that it is difficult to see how it could be seriously challenged.
Geoffrey R. Russom
Leonard Neidorf has become an important figure in Old English studies as the leader of a movement to reestablish philology within the field. The Transmission of "Beowulf" is a major advance in the study of poems that survive in unique manuscripts and should be required reading in all Beowulf courses. A new generation of scholars who have learned from it will have much valuable and interesting work to do.
Rolf Bremmer
Leonard Neidorf systematically and lucidly analyzes a whole range of textual errors that came about in the history of Beowulf's transmission from one scribe to another.
