| View previous topic :: View next topic |
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
 |
|
I still don't understand (from an Applied Epistemological point of view) your overall position. If the inflectional timetable is anything even remotely as you say it is then it would routinely be the case, as it is with atomic decay of particles, to date all A/S and 'Middle' English documents.
As for your comments on Beowulf, it simply cannot be right. The version (only one, remember) that has come down to us must have been written down by one person at one time. Although this 'poet' might have used archaic forms occasionally he would hardly wish -- even if he could -- to use a form of highly- (or as may be lightly-) inflected language that would sound completely weird to his contemporaries.
The fact that it can't be dated even to one century can only be because a) it is forgery or b) A/S didn't alter much through the centuries and the rapid changes reported are in fact artefacts caused by scholars forced into a paradigm that demands practically every word and most of the grammar changed in a few hundred years.
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Donmillion
In: Acton, Middlesex
|
|
|
|
Forgive me, Mick, but (from a linguistic point of view) your comments are rather naive.
| If the inflectional timetable is anything even remotely as you say it is then it would routinely be the case, as it is with atomic decay of particles, to date all A/S and 'Middle' English documents. |
The decay of particles (which is not an atomic event, by the way, but subatomic) is a binary phenomenon. Language is not. Chad pointed out several times that different dialects exist today, and did so also in the past. The same is true of the personal styles of authors. Both change over time, and will change at different rates and for different types of document. Or do you imagine that on 1 January 1200, the definite article was declined in the way I've previously tabulated, by all English speakers (or writers, at least) throughout the country, and on the 1st of January 1201, all English speakers suddenly changed to a new set of declensions, followed by another on 1 Jan 1202, and so on?
So although likely dates can be assigned, they can only be approximations--unless, of course, there are more specific indications such as a date in the text itself. Hence the 'circa' in dates such as 'c. 1205' for the Brut.
| The version [of Beowulf] (only one, remember) that has come down to us must have been written down by one person at one time. |
Not absolutely true. Prior to the invention of printing, many documents were created by teams of scribes rather than by individuals, and usually their individual hands can be discerned in the MSS. I don't think that's true of Beowulf, but again I haven't studied the matter.
Even if it were true, it could then be true also of each MS of Homer that has survived. Yet the so-called 'Homeric dialect' does consist of a mixture of Greek dialects, primarily Ionic, but secondarily Aeolic and with elements of Doric and Attic. This 'dialect' certainly used 'a form of highly-inflected language that would sound completely weird to' its readers, some features of which were ultimately explained when Linear B was cracked. The relevant Wikipedia article includes a long list of ways in which 'Homeric Greek' differed from 'Classical Greek'. It's at least partly because of this mixed dialect that modern estimates for the date of composition range between the 9th and 6th centuries BC. Sauce, geese, and ganders come to mind.
| The fact that it can't be dated even to one century can only be because a) it is forgery or b) A/S didn't alter much through the centuries |
Many other 'ancient' texts also can't be dated 'even to one century' (e.g. again, Homer), but that doesn't mean that they're forgeries, only that we don't know enough about them (we weren't there at the time). On the other hand, following the standardisation effectively introduced by Alfred, the (written) AS language didn't change much from the ninth to twelfth centuries, except as the northern dialect departed so far from it under the pressure of Norse that it ceased to make any kind of sense to continue to use essentially southern forms.
This doesn't explain the dating difficulty with Beowulf, though, which apparently includes linguistic features pre-dating Alfred's time. I'm certain that it's (c) the 'Beowulfic dialect' that's the problem, and I believe it arose from the same cause as the 'Homeric dialect': a complex oral history underlying the ultimate written form.
| The rapid changes reported [in AS and Early English] are in fact artefacts caused by scholars forced into a paradigm that demands practically every word and most of the grammar changed in a few hundred years. |
"Practically every word" is a tad exaggerated, don't you think? You pointed out yourself (in a different forum, I think) that there's much more AS in modern English than "father, mother, sister, brother".
In any case, there's the evidence of the Middle English manuscripts, many of which explicitly date themselves, and through which the changes can be plotted at something like the rate I've already indicated. With regard to earlier times, and always excluding Northumbrian, the problem is that you're dealing with a standardised form for which rule-books had been written. By the time of Brut, the language in use had diverged sufficiently that the rule books no longer worked, and authors began to write the language as they spoke it, not as it had been spoken a couple of hundred years earlier. As we know very clearly from the case of Ormulum, some of them even tried to create a new standard that would fit their contemporary speech.
|
|
 |
|
|
|
Chad
In: Ramsbottom
|
|
|
|
| Yet the so-called �Homeric dialect� does consist of a mixture of Greek dialects, primarily Ionic, but secondarily Aeolic and with elements of Doric and Attic. This �dialect� certainly used �a form of highly-inflected language that would sound completely weird to� its readers |
DING! DING! DING! DING!.......
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Donmillion
In: Acton, Middlesex
|
|
|
|
| Chad wrote: | | Yet the so-called �Homeric dialect� does consist of a mixture of Greek dialects, primarily Ionic, but secondarily Aeolic and with elements of Doric and Attic. This �dialect� certainly used �a form of highly-inflected language that would sound completely weird to� its readers |
DING! DING! DING! DING!....... |
... And talking of sounding completely weird to the readers, h-e-e-e-e-r-e's Chad!
Whose point, I guess (lacking telepathy myself), is that "Homer" must be a forgery like Beowulf.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Ishmael
In: Toronto
|
|
|
|
|
He wouldn't be the first to suggest it.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Donmillion
In: Acton, Middlesex
|
|
|
|
| Grant wrote: | | [Surely, Don is claiming to have done what generations of Anglo Saxon scholars have always said was beyond them - to explain exactly how Anglo Saxon morphed into English. |
Can you quote me some, Grant? In the books and Internet articles I've read, I've only encountered the same set of explanations from several different AS scholars, and haven't found any who saw it as a mystery. I'm sure there must be some, though, since, clearly, your reading is far more extensive than mine.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Donmillion
In: Acton, Middlesex
|
|
|
|
| Mick Harper wrote: | | In the original THOBR I said that poetry was a special case because Anglo-Saxon gentry-survivors from the Norman takeover would be in a position to employ 'Anglo-Saxon' poets in the traditional manner |
This remark from a couple of days ago was sparked by the Layamon discussion, and reflects the fact that Brut was written in verse.
I didn't spot it at the time, but we have Layamon's own refutation of the idea in his Introduction:
| There was a priest in the land, who was named Layamon; he was son of Leovenath�may the Lord be gracious to him!�he dwelt at Ernley, at a noble church upon Severn�s bank,�good it there seemed to him�near Radestone, where he books read. It came to him in mind, and in his chief thought, that he would tell the noble deeds of the English; what they were named, and whence they came, who first possessed the English land, after the flood that came from the Lord �. |
(From Mason's translation in the Penn State Electronic Classics Series at http://www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/wace/wace-arthurian-chron.pdf ).
We can now argue, I suppose, over whether Brut is a forgery, or merely its Introduction.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Donmillion
In: Acton, Middlesex
|
|
|
|
| Ishmael wrote: | | He wouldn't be the first to suggest it. |
But to accept that Homer was a forgery, we have to accept that the corpus of Linear B documents found initially by Schliemann at Mycenae in the 1870s (but not recognised by him as a script), then by Evans in Crete in the 1890s (3000 of them, on baked clay tablets), and by other archaeologists since, is also a forgery. This is because they include elements of the Greek language, in a very early form, that are also found in Homer, but not in other Greek texts except for Hesiod. They also resolve a number of previously supposed "anachronisms" in Homer, including his "allegation" that the Bronze-Age Greeks had a writing system.
Since Linear B tablets have been found as far apart as Germany and Georgia, there's strong support for their authenticity. But I suppose it's possible they're all forged, thousands upon thousands of them, in order to support the Homeric forgeries. If you're of a convinced "forgery!" mindset ...
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Ishmael
In: Toronto
|
|
|
|
| Donmillion wrote: | | ...If you're of a convinced "forgery!" mindset ... |
I am.
So there must be a way to resolve these problems. I leave it to those with larger intellects.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Donmillion
In: Acton, Middlesex
|
|
|
|
| Chad wrote: | | Yet the so-called �Homeric dialect� does consist of a mixture of Greek dialects, primarily Ionic, but secondarily Aeolic and with elements of Doric and Attic. This �dialect� certainly used �a form of highly-inflected language that would sound completely weird to� its readers |
DING! DING! DING! DING!....... |
Perhaps it's the "completely weird" bit that our Ramsbottom ding-a-ling is pointing to. I was quoting Mick, of course; but I imagine that Homer would sound as "completely weird" to a 4th-Century BC audience, or Beowulf to a 12th-Century AD audience, as the King James Bible to a 21st-Century audience: weird, but not unintelligible, for the most part.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
Chad
In: Ramsbottom
|
|
|
|
| Don wrote: | | thousands upon thousands of them |
They remained unknown and totally hidden for thousands of years... now we find shit loads of them, all over the damned place!
DING! DING! DING! DING!
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The question of literary forgeries is an interesting one. There have been examples of an author attempting to pass off a work as the work of another or as the work of an earlier time. It is usually done for gain either money or prestige. In any case there is some definite motivation.
Beowulf and Homer don't appear to be in this category although I do recall that Mick made a nice case for Beowulf to be a tudor (or was it 18th century?) forgery to cash in on an aristocratic fashion for "ye antiquities". From Don's recent posts you would have to conclude that the forger would have had to be a very considerable scholar.
The question of Homer is something else though. Clearly the Odyssey and the Iliad are the retelling of legends in the same fashion as, say, Tennyson or Scott. Whether there really was an individual called Homer who wrote these epics is open to doubt. However we know from countless references that these poems existed in written form prior to or coincidentally with the beginning of the Greek Classical Age.
Thus my questions to Ishmael are: In what sense do you think Homer is a forgery? and What might, in your view, have been the motivation of the alleged forger?
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Chad
In: Ramsbottom
|
|
|
|
| Don wrote: | | I imagine that Homer would sound as "completely weird" to a 4th-Century BC audience, or Beowulf to a 12th-Century AD audience, as the King James Bible to a 21st-Century audience: weird, but not unintelligible, for the most part. |
I never realised the King James Bible swapped dialects mid text.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Chad wrote: | | Don wrote: | | I imagine that Homer would sound as "completely weird" to a 4th-Century BC audience, or Beowulf to a 12th-Century AD audience, as the King James Bible to a 21st-Century audience: weird, but not unintelligible, for the most part. |
I never realised the King James Bible swapped dialects mid text. |
Ah come on, Chad. He is not saying that they would sound weird because of the mixed dialects But they would sound weird just because of the archaisms. Even I can understand that.
Loads of mixed dialects would appear to me much more likely to be consistent with a multiple author theory than it is with a forgery theory. One would expect a forgery would have a single author/editor who would try hard to produce a believable document and avoid suspicious inconsistencies.
Although you could always posit an ultra sophisticated double bluff a la John Le Carr�, that is a bit of a long bow, isn't it?
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
The Library Index 
FAQ 
Search
Register
Profile 
Log in to check your private messages 
Log in 
