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The state of the Beowulf manuscript 1882—1983

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Kevin S. Kiernan
Kevin S. Kiernan
Affiliation:
The University of Kentucky
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Extract

There is a lingering notion among Beowulf scholars, despite Chauncey Tinker's effort to dispel it eighty years ago, that the Beowulf manuscript is slowly but inexorably crumbling away in its modern home in the British Library. The gloomy news for a general audience is that the manuscript, ‘charred at the edges by the fire’ that decimated the Cotton Library in 1731, ‘continues to deteriorate year by year’. A scholarly audience gets the same impression from Norman Davis, who gives us a reproduction of an old transliteration beside new photographs of the manuscript. He says, ‘Zupitza's transliteration … has permanent value as a record of what he could see in the manuscript in 1880–2’, a comment that certainly implies that Zupitza was able to see more in the manuscript a century ago than we can see today. In fact, with the aid of modern artificial lighting, notably fibre-optic and ultra-violet light, we can see far more in the manuscript today than Zupitza was able to see in 1882.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 13 , December 1984 , pp. 23 - 42
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1984

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References

1 The Translations of Beowulf: a Critical Bibliography, Yale Stud, in Eng. 16 (1903; repr. New York, 1968), 7–8.Google Scholar

2 Hieatt, A. Kent, ‘Introduction’, Beowulf and other Old English Poems, trans. Hieatt, Constance B. (Indianapolis, Ind., 1979), p. 1.Google Scholar

3 Beowulf Reproduced in Facsimile from the Unique Manuscript British Museum MS. Cotton Vitellius A. xv, with a Transliteration and Notes by Julius Zupitza, 2nd ed. (containing a new reproduction of the manuscript with an introductory note by Norman Davis), EETS 245 (London, 1959; repr. 1967), v.Google Scholar

4 Humphrey, Wanley, Antiquæ Literaturæ Septentrionalis Liber alter … Catalogus Historico Criticus (Oxford, 1705)Google Scholar (and, in facsimile, Eng. Ling. 1500–1800 248 (Menston, Wise, 1970)), 218.

5 The Thorkelin Transcripts of Beowulf in Facsimile, ed. Malone, Kemp, EEMF 1 (Copenhagen, 1951), 1,65–7 and 89–90Google Scholar for A, and 1a, 101a-2a, 104a and 140a for B.

6 For two successful applications of electronic photography and digital image-processing to medieval manuscripts, see Benton, John F., Gillespie, Alan R. and Soha, James M., ‘Digital Image-Processing Applied to the Photography of Manuscripts: with Examples Drawn from the Pincus MS of Arnald of Villanova’, Scriptorium 33 (1979), 40–55,Google Scholar and Benton, John F., ‘Electronic Subtraction of the Superior Writing of a Palimpsest’, forthcoming in Techniques de déchiffrement des écritures effacées, ed. Irigoin, Jean.Google Scholar There is an electronic camera (the Video Spectral Comparator, or VSC-2) now available in the Conservation Laboratory of the British Library, but as yet no equipment for digital image-processing.

7 See Smith, A. H., ‘The Photography of Manuscripts’, London Med. Stud. 1 (1958), 200–2,Google Scholar for ultra-violet readings from the last page of Beowulf, and Kiernan, Kevin S., ‘Beowulf’ and the ‘Beowulf’ Manuscript (New Brunswick, NJ, 1981),Google Scholar for ultra-violet readings of scribal erasures in the manuscript.

8 The Nowell Codex (British Museum Cotton Vitellius A. XV, Second MS), EEMF 12 (Copenhagen, 1963), 49–109.Google Scholar With better lighting than Zupitza had, Malone was able to see some readings that Zupitza could not. But Malone's cautious, yet fundamental, reliance on Zupitza for covered readings repeatedly appears in phrases like ‘gone or covered’ and ‘may or may not be whole’, corresponding to analogous statements in Zupitza's notes.

9 The instrument available in the Students’ Room transmits light through a bundle of fibres; the one now available in the Conservation Laboratory, however, transmits a somewhat clearer light through a tube of fibres with a liquid centre.

10 For the many advantages of the manuscript foliation over the 1884 foliation Malone follows, see my ‘The History and Construction of the Composite Codex’, ‘Beowulf’ and the ‘Beowulf’ Manuscript, pp. 65–169,Google Scholar esp. 71–110. The use of the manuscript foliation will present no difficulties for readers of Malone's notes, because Malone begins his discussion of each folio by locating the folio number on the manuscript.

11 See I. K. Belaya, ‘Softening and Restoration of Parchment in Manuscripts and Bookbindings’, and ‘Instructions for the Softening of Parchment Manuscripts and Bookbindings’, Restauralor I.I (1969), 20–48 and 49–51.Google Scholar

12 Ibid. pp. 30 and 36.

13 I wish to thank Mr Anthony Parker, Senior Conservation Officer in the Department of Manuscripts at the British Library, for patiently answering my questions and for giving me access to the equipment in the Conservation Laboratory.