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Three versions of the Jonah story: an investigation of narrative technique in Old English homilies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Paul E. Szarmach
Paul E. Szarmach
Affiliation:
The State University of New York
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Extract

As Professor Clemoes has demonstrated, Ælfric treats a wide variety of subjects with both felicity and facility. While Clemoes makes his case by presenting passages differing in intellectual content but displaying the same flexibility of style, it is noteworthy that first among his selections is a narrative excerpt from the Life of St Swithhun. Generally students of Old English prose have not chosen to pursue the implicit connections between narrative and intellectual prose, preferring, it appears, to keep generic guidelines clear and distinct. At least one significant exception is C. E. Wright's search for saga in histories and chronicles. Clemoes's suggestion of a ‘narrative style’, however, merits a wider application to Old English, homiletic literature. Obviously homilies are not stories, but one can find in the use of exemplum, anecdote and history a narrative style at work, or at least a narrative consciousness.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 1 , January 1972 , pp. 183 - 192
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1972

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References

Page 183 note 1 Clemoes, Peter, ‘Ælfric’, Continuations and Beginnings, ed. Stanley, E. G. (London, 1966), pp. 176–209Google Scholar. I wish to express my thanks to Professor Clemoes and Professor Fred C. Robinson for many helpful suggestions in the preparation of this article. A version of it was read at the Sixth Conference on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University, May 1971.

Page 183 note 2 Wright, C. E., The Cultivation of Saga in Anglo-Saxon England (Edinburgh, 1939)Google Scholar. Cf. Brodeur's, Arthur G. review, Jnl of Amer. Folklore 54 (1941), 88–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Page 183 note 3 For information on the manuscripts see Ker, N. R., Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford, 1957), (1) pp. 460–4, 51–6 and 99–105Google Scholar, (2) pp. 512–13 and (3) pp. 182–5.

Page 184 note 1 Ibid. pp. 460, 51 and 56, 99 and 105, and 182 and 184. Max Fdrster(Die Vercelli-Homilien (Hamburg, 1932; repr. Darmstadt, 1964), p. 1Google Scholar) gives ‘about 1020’ and ‘about 1120’ for CCCC 162 and CCCC 303 respectively.

Page 184 note 2 Similar adaptation occurs concerning the repentant Ninevite king sitting in ashes (Jonas iii. 6). This is omitted in VAB, while Ælfric, with the C redactor following him, substitutes ‘dyde … axan uppan his heafod’.

Page 184 note 3 Ed. Mutzenbecher, A., Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 23, pp. 332–4.Google Scholar

Page 184 note 4 Maximus's work is in the homiliary of Alain de Farfa and the supplement to the homiliary of Toledo as well as in the homiliary of Paul. See Grégoire, Réginald, Les Homéliaires du Moyen Âge (Rome, 1966), pp. 52, 95 and 184Google Scholar. For the importance of the homiliary of Paul see Smetana, Cyril L., ‘Aelfric and the Early Medieval Homiliary’, Traditio 15 (1959), 163–204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Page 185 note 1 The theme of spiritual combat is borrowed from Caesarius of Aries, Sermo 207 (ed. G. Morin, CCSL 104, p. 829)Google Scholar. See Szarmach, Paul E., ‘Caesarius of Aries and the Vercelli Homilies’, Traditio 26 (1970), 319.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Page 185 note 2 Il Codice Vercellese (Rome, 1913).

Page 185 note 3 108r24–109r9. I supply my own punctuation, capitals and word-division and omit manuscript accents.

There are three main manuscript traditions of this homily: V, B and C. Originally A was very close to V but subsequently was corrected by superscription and addition under the influence of an ancestor of B. Never sharing an error with C against V and B, A almost always agrees with either V or B. See Szarmach, Paul E., ‘Selected Vercelli Homilies’ (unpub. thesis, Harvard, 1968), pp. 193–5.Google Scholar

Page 187 note 1 See further, below, p. 189, n. 2.Google Scholar

Page 188 note 1 The use of don to emphasize right moral action recalls in contrast the actions of Adam and Eve: ‘ Be ðam treowe Crist sylf forewarnode aegðer ge Adam ge Evan, 7 him sæcde bam þæt swa hwylcum dæge swa hie ðæs treowes bleda æton, hie sceoldon forweorðan. 7 hie eac swa dydon’ (107r8–12).

Page 188 note 2 The Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church, … the Sermoms Catholici, or Homilies of Ælfric, ed. Thorpe, B. (London, 1844–1846) 1, 244–7Google Scholar – (Thorpe in his translation incorrectly makes Mamertus bishop of Vienna.)

Page 189 note 1 I have altered Thorpe's punctuation.

Page 189 note 2 Clemoes, ‘Ælfric’, pp. 196–7 discusses Ælfric's avoidance of elaborate detail. In the De Jona pseudo-Fulgentius gives an elaborate and detailed description of the storm (Migne, Patrologia Latina 65, cols. 878–80). Zeno of Verona amplifies the storm extravagantly and gives a lengthy allegorical interpretation of it (PL II, cols. 444–50).

Page 190 note 1 As has been mentioned above, the third quarter of the eleventh century is the date of the extant manuscript; the date of the redaction is unknown. Ker, Catalogue, pp. 183–4, was the first to point out C's debt to Ælfric. He gives a shorthand account of the relationship.

Page 192 note 1 Cf. Haymo of Halberstadt (PL 117, cols. 127ff.) and Jerome (PL 25, cols. 1145 ff.).

Page 192 note 2 The same tendency is evident in the redactor's version of the Mamertus story. Here he inserts Ælfric's summary of the calamities at Vienne: ‘Eac wearð on þære ylcan byrig mycel eorðstyrung 7 feollon cyrcan 7 hus, 7 comon wilde bæran 7 wulfas 7 abiton þæs folces mycelne dæl 7 þæs cinges botl wearð mid heofenlicum fyre eall forbærned.’ And he ends with Ælfric's coda: ‘7 seo gedrecednys þa sona geswac þe heom onsæet; se gewuna nu þæs faestenes þurhwunað gehwar on geleaffulre gesomnunge.’ The first borrowing combines with the excellent VAB account of the plague to produce a frightening picture. The heightening of action and the resultant appeal to the emotions of the audience are in line with the redactor's work on the Jonah story. The second borrowing, which makes the connection between Mamertus and Rogation Days quite explicit, results in a sharpening of focus similar to that in the redactor's use of the second divine command to Jonah.

Page 192 note 3 The Cultivation of Saga, p. 80.Google Scholar