| Paper 1201-c | R.T. Hampson's 'Lost' Transcript of Cotton Tiberius B.i and Joseph Bosworth's 1858 Edition of Orosius
(Language: English)
Dabney A. Bankert, Department of English, James Madison University, Virginia
Index terms: Historiography - Medieval, Language and Literature - Old English, Manuscripts and Palaeography, Medievalism and Antiquarianism |
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| Abstract | Paper -a:
Nicholas Howe proposed an Anglo-Saxon reader response to MS Junius 11 that focused on readers' ability to link the poems' concern with dislocation to contemporary Anglo-Saxon interests. The same readers must also have found ways to close the intellectual distances within the manuscript's contents, if any of the numerous readings of unity in this manuscript are to hold. Building on Howe's posited reader, I propose a re-definition of book unity as Junius 11 offers it, and as it may occur in other Anglo-Saxon books, one that allows room for both sequential organization and, at the same time, narrative repetition, enormous stylistic variation, and varying degrees of reader experience or skill. This paper explores what Junius 11 asks of the reader (c.1000) and how connections might play out in practice.
Paper -b:
This paper offers a new interpretation of the runic note that appears in the margins of CCCC MS 41, accompanying the Old English Bede. I argue that the runic note should be read as a comment on the emendation of the name Balthild to Brunhild in the passage it accompanies, the commentator pointing out the chronological gap between the regencies of these two Frankish queens. The paper will also discuss the form of the runes, their status in late Anglo-Saxon England, and the rationale behind the commentator's decision to employ the script for this particular marginal note.
Paper -c:
Robert Thomas Hampson (1793-1858), newspaper reporter and editor by trade, was unusual, even in an age glutted with improbable antiquaries. In 1841 he completed a transcript of the Old English Orosius from Cotton Tiberius B.1, and collated it with Daines Barrington's 1773 edition. In 1850 Hampson loaned and later gave it to Joseph Bosworth who was then beginning his edition of Orosius. This transcript, which Bosworth vowed to keep as the 'greatest treasure', subsequently went missing. In fact, the Bodleian Library purchased it in 1924 (MS Eng. Hist. d.114); correspondence between Bosworth and Hampson is sewn into the binding, and Bosworth annotated it. I will describe this unique transcript, explore the collaborative relationship between Hampson and Bosworth, and consider what Hampson's practice of and pleasure in amateur scribal copying reveal about cultural attitudes toward Anglo-Saxon manuscripts in the mid-19th century.
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