Christ and Satan: A Critical Edition

184 Pages·1977·8.854 MB·English, Old English

by  Robert Emmett Finnegan (ed.)

CHRISTAND SATÁN
A CRITICAL EDITION

CHRIST AND SATAN
A CRITICAL EDITION
Robert Emmett Finnegan
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Christ and Satán.
Christ and Satán
Text in Anglo-Saxon, introd. in English.
Bibliography: p.
ISBN 0-88920-041-6 bd. ISBN 0-88920-040-8 pa.
I. Finnegan, Robert Emmett, 1941-
PR1630.F55 829'. 1 C77-001234-5
Copyright © 1977
Wilfrid Laurier University Press
Waterloo, Ontario, Canadá
N2L 3C5
¿Yo parí ofthis book may be translated or reproduced in anyform, by print,
photoprint, microfilm, microfiche, or any other means, without written
permission from the publisher.
Cover design by Helen Lange
PREFACE
Christ and Satán was edited separately some fifty years ago by
Merrel D. Clubb. Since 1925 it has appeared in Volume I of The Anglo-
Saxon Poetic Records: The Junius Manuxcript, 1931, edited by George
Philip Krapp. Until recently the poem has not received overly much
critical attention.
This edition is based upon a careful examination of the manuscript,
and I ha ve tried to present a text as cióse to Junius XI as possible. But
such are the difficulties of dealing with Christ and Satán that an editor,
even of a basically conservative bent, must, if he wishes to offer any-
thing more than a transcription, become involved in weighing emen-
dations: there is little purpose in perpetuating scribal lapses, or in
hallowing unintelligibility. Whenever I have judged an emendation
necessary, the original reading is given in the Textual Notes and the
foundation of the emendation argued in the Explanatory Notes.
1 have intentionally pared these notes cióse on matters of philology.
Many discussions of forms and possible or probable variants are the
dead leaves of Anglo-Saxon scholarship, and they ought to be allowed to
rest. On occasion, to show the almost universal appeal of an emendation
over a form in the manuscript, I have reference to Junius, Thorpe,
Bouterwek, Dietrich, Cosijn et al. More rarely do I note in detail the
attempt of older scholars to supply those lines they feel were dropped
from the poem in one or other transcription: with an emendation we at
least work from a known form, but to supply what the manuscript does
not possess in any way is to work too much by the spirit.
I should here record my thanks to the Canadá Council for a grant
which allowed me to study the manuscript at Oxford, and to the Master
and scholars of Campion Hall who made my visit most pleasant. The
editors of The Explicator, Modern Philology, Classica et Mediaevalia
and Philological Quarterly have kindly given me permission to use
previously published material in this book.
The book has been published with the help of a grant from the
Humanities Research Council of Canadá, using funds provided by the
Canadá Council.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE v
ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THE BOOK ÍX
Introduction
I. THE MANUSCRIPT 3
II. THE PROBLEM OF UNITY 12
III. SOURCES 37
IV. LANGUAOE AND DATE 56
The Text
THE POEM 68
EXPLANATORY NOTES 91
viii TABLE OF CONTENTS
THE GLOSSARY 123
APPENDIX: CHRIST AND SATÁN AND CLASSICAL RHETORIC 151
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 163