Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 May 2020
In the previous chapter, it was claimed that a text’s formal features reflect contemporary ideologies, and that as a work is copied and recopied these formal features change to reflect shifting socio-cultural imperatives; texts are not only invented in the ancient rhetorical sense (i.e. inventio ‘finding’), but in the modern sense as well. This claim is well demonstrated by the transmission history of a work now canonical in Anglo-Saxon studies: the Old English epic poem Beowulf, surviving in London, British Library, MS Cotton Vitellius A.xv (part II). In addition to Beowulf the codex also contains a poem on the Biblical story of Judith, and three prose works: The Life of St Christopher, The Marvels of the East and The Letter of Alexander to Aristotle. The manuscript was copied by two scribes.
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