29.3484, Review: English, Old; Historical Linguistics; Linguistic Theories: Studer-Joho (2017)
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LINGUIST List: Vol-29-3484. Tue Sep 11 2018. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.
Subject: 29.3484, Review: English, Old; Historical Linguistics; Linguistic Theories: Studer-Joho (2017)
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Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2018 14:42:44
From: Bev Thurber [bat23 at cornell.edu]
Subject: A Catalogue of Manuscripts Known to Contain Old English Dry-Point Glosses
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AUTHOR: Dieter Studer-Joho
TITLE: A Catalogue of Manuscripts Known to Contain Old English Dry-Point Glosses
SERIES TITLE: Schweizer Anglistische Arbeiten (SAA), vol. 142
PUBLISHER: Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG
YEAR: 2017
REVIEWER: Bev Thurber
SUMMARY
This book is a detailed study of Old English (OE) dry-point glosses that sets
them into the general context of manuscript (MS) studies. Studer-Joho
describes the study of dry-point glosses as “one of the last frontiers of OE
studies, as the domain of dry-point glossing is the most likely candidate for
the discovery of as yet unknown sizable quantities of OE material” (249).
Dry-point glosses are defined as “additions that are themselves made up of
linguistic material” (17) made “by deforming or bruising the parchment by
means of a stylus or some other non-colouring hand-held device, such as an awl
or a knife” (26) rather than by depositing ink. This definition excludes
doodles and other non-linguistic additions made without ink. The book
consists of seven chapters plus an eighth comprising the back matter (list of
abbreviations, references, and two indexes, one of manuscripts and the other
general).
The first chapter is a very short introduction that leads the reader into the
book by describing how the author became interested in dry-point glosses. His
interest was piqued in 2006 by the seemingly magical appearance of Old High
German (OHG) dry-point glosses in a 9th century manuscript under suitable
lighting conditions (13).
The second chapter, ''Terminology and Scope,'' is among the longest in the
book. It explains what dry-point glosses are and are not for the purposes of
this study and connects dry-point writing with other forms of deformational
writing, such as texts on wax tablets and inscriptions, including those in
runes, carved on objects, to show that although it was not the norm, dry-point
writing was certainly less uncommon in the past than it is now. The chapter
ends with a discussion of dry-point glosses in languages other than OE, most
notably OHG, that ranges as far as Old Slavonic and East Asian languages.
Chapter Three summarizes previous scholarship on dry-point glosses. The
contributions of Humphrey Wanley, Arthur Napier, Herbert Meritt, Bernhard
Bischoff and Josef Hofmann, Ray Page, and the Dictionary of Old English Corpus
rate individual sections in this rather short chapter; an additional section
is devoted to miscellaneous other contributions. The chapter ends with a brief
section describing the inclusion of dry-point glosses in the Dictionary of Old
English.
The catalogue of the title is described and presented in Chapters Four and
Five, respectively. To compile it, Studer-Joho worked tirelessly through the
relevant literature, most notably Ker (1957) and later updates (most recently
Blockley (1994)) and Gneuss (2001), for mentions of dry-point glosses,
including ones relegated to footnotes. This process yielded 33 of the 34
manuscripts included in the catalogue. The exception is London, British
Library, Royal 15.B.xix, in which the author observed undocumented dry-point
glosses while working on the catalogue (163).
At 106 pages, or an average of about three pages per manuscript, the catalogue
itself forms the bulk of the book. Each manuscript is identified by its
shelfmark and Ker number as well as any common names. Each entry comprises two
parts: information on the manuscript as a physical document and information on
the glosses. The manuscript section includes the following information: Its
type (e.g., vellum codex), dimensions, and numbering system; any codicological
information; descriptions of its layout, ornamentation (if any), and the
script, including its date; a table of contents; information on the
manuscript's origin and provenance; and references to secondary literature
dealing with the manuscript and facsimiles, if any exist.
The second section of each entry, which describes the glosses, is organized
according to the table of contents. Each text in the manuscript with glosses
of any type (dry-point or ink, OE or another language) is the subject of a
section. Within that section, any editions and translations of the text are
listed, then a few references to the secondary literature are provided, if any
are available. This is followed by descriptions of the glosses, arranged by
language. Each section includes a description of the glosses, references to
any editions, palaeographical information on the script and its date,
references to any secondary literature, and for OE glosses, information on the
glosses' inclusion in the Dictionary of Old English Corpus (2009).
Although, as Studer-Joho notes, the amount of information on each manuscript
and its glosses in the literature varies widely (94), the catalogue entries
are fairly similar in length. The range is from just under two pages for
number 30 (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale lat. 9561), which contains
approximately 77 OE dry-point glosses to Gregorius’s Regula pastoralis, to
approximately five pages for numbers 5 (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 223)
and 29 (Oxford, St. John’s College 154), which each contain four different
texts with ink or dry-point glosses in OE and/or Latin. As might be expected
from the title, OE glosses receive preferential treatment in the catalog.
Sections on glosses in other languages are less detailed (see, e.g., the
descriptions of Latin and OE glosses on p. 132). The lists of secondary
literature included in the catalogue are not comprehensive; Studer-Joho's goal
is ''to pave the way for the reader's first steps into the literature
available on that specific MS'' (92).
Chapter Six, “Characterization of the Known Corpus of Old English Dry-Point
Gloss Manuscripts,” stands with Chapter Two as the longest of the book aside
from the catalogue itself. In this chapter, the manuscripts in the catalogue
are divided into groups based on different attributes, including origin, date,
contents, and the presence of other glosses (OE ink glosses and dry-point
glosses in other languages) and construe marks. The resulting groups are used
as the basis for an attempt to find patterns that provide information about
the practice of dry-point glossing. Canterbury emerges as a possible “centre
of dry-point glossing” during the 10th century (213).
Studer-Joho also addresses the question of whether the corpus of dry-point
glosses is sufficient to draw conclusions in this chapter (233). He discusses
Bernhard Bischoff’s significant role in discovering dry-point glosses in
Continental manuscripts and concludes that “Anglo-Saxon MSS prior to the 9th
c. preserved in British libraries ought to be revisited specifically with
dry-point glossing in mind. Perhaps the restricted visibility of dry-point
glosses causes a misbalance in our corpus” (234). He goes on to note that it
is impossible to know whether all the dry-point glosses in a manuscript have
been discovered (239).
This is one major theme of the final chapter, “Summary and Outlook,” which
focuses on the future of OE dry-point gloss studies. Two directions for future
research are discussed: Finding more glosses and cataloging the ones that are
known. Studer-Joho pays particular attention to technological methods that may
be used to identify new glosses, such as lighting techniques, the possibility
of three-dimensional scanning, and methods used in digital humanities
projects. As for cataloging, desiderata include a corpus of OE glosses in both
printed and online form to take advantage of the benefits of both styles, a
new update to Ker (1957), and an indexed bibliography of the relevant
literature. Studer-Joho proposes a system that presents “OE glosses in such a
fashion that the editions pave the way for a continuous accumulation of
knowledge about OE glosses and OE glossing by supplying as much detailed
information about the glosses in their MS context as possible” (262).
EVALUATION
This book should help increase the visibility of dry-point glosses both
literally (researchers will be more likely to find them in manuscripts) and
figuratively (researchers will be more familiar with the concept). One thread
that runs through it is how difficult it is to observe dry-point glosses
because of the need for lighting conditions that are frequently unavailable in
modern reading rooms. Studer-Joho provides a vivid anecdote to highlight the
difficulty of viewing dry-point glosses: at a conference, he added a dry-point
gloss to a handout he distributed and invited attendees to look for it. Nobody
was able to see it, although, he notes, it was “plainly visible to the naked
eye...in natural daylight” (34). He also describes glosses in London, British
Library Royal 15.B.xix that are “next to invisible in ambient reading room
lighting” and therefore went unnoticed by previous researchers (163).
The section of the book describing OHG dry-point glosses (52–58) is
particularly effective at showing how quickly this field is evolving now that
more people have begun to look for such glosses carefully. A graph on page 55
shows how the number of manuscripts known to contain OHG dry-point glosses
increased from 70 in 1996 to 179 in October 2013. This graph provides a strong
justification for this book and encouragement to OE scholars, who Studer-Joho
quotes Ray Page as considering less ''adventurous'' than their OHG
counterparts (75). Still, OE gloss scholars have made significant inroads into
their corpus; Studer-Joho calculates that “OE dry-point gloss MSS still
constitute a larger fraction within the corpus of OE gloss MSS (≈16.3%) than
OHG dry-point gloss MSS do within the corpus of OHG gloss MSS (≈11–13%)”
(205). Studer-Joho estimates that roughly 3850 OE dry-point glosses have been
edited to date (269).
The book makes it clear that there is significantly more research to be done
in this field, much of it painstaking labor that may have little reward.
Chapters Six and Seven are particularly full of ideas for future research,
from specific manuscripts that should be evaluated carefully to suggestions
for technological projects. Overall, Studer-Joho's book provides a welcome
summary of the state of research on dry-point glosses and a point of entry
into this field.
REFERENCES
Blockley, Mary. 1994. “Further Addenda and Corrigenda to N. R. Ker’s
Catalogue.” In: Mary P. Richards (ed.), Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: Basic
Readings. London: Garland Publishing, 79–85.
Ker, N. R. 1957. Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
Gneuss, Helmut. 2001. Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A List of
Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100.
Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.
Di Paolo Healey, Antonette, John Holland, David McDougall, Ian McDougall and
Xin Xiang. 2009. The Dictionary of Old English Corpus in Electronic Form,
TEI-P5 conformant version, 2009 release. Toronto: DOE Project [CD-ROM].
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Bev Thurber is an independent scholar interested in historical linguistics and
the history of ice skating.
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