Palimpsests and the Literary Imagination of Medieval England: Collected Essays [Hardcover]

Witnesses to the disappearance of a text, palimpsest manuscripts bear the marks of their own genesis, with their original inscription rubbed out and written over on the same parchment. This collection explores analogies of erasure and rewriting observed in editorial and literary practices underlying the production of texts from medieval England.Foreword: Homage to Andr? Cr?pin; L.Carruthers Introduction: Palimpsests and 'Palimpsestuous' Reinscriptions; R.Chai-Elsholz PART I: PERMANENCE AND IMPERMANENCE OF WRITING ON THE PAGE? An Anglo-Saxon Palimpsest from Fleury: Orl?ans, Biblioth?que Municipale MS 342 (290); A.Papahagi Recovering Anglo-Saxon Erasures: Some Questions, Tools and Techniques; P.Stokes Some Psalter Glosses in Their Immediate Context; J.Roberts The Palimpsest and Old English Homiletic Composition; P.E.Szarmach 'Ic Beda'...'Cw?? Beda': Reinscribing Bede in the Old English Historia ecclesiastica gentis anglorum ; S.Rowley Vernacular Engravings in Late Medieval England; F.Bourgne PART II: IMPERMANENCE AND ACCUMULATION IN THE LITERARY IMAGINATION Rewriting Genres: Beowulf as Epic Romance; L. Carruthers ? Palimpsestic Philomela: Reinscription in Chaucer's Legend of Philomela ; G.Aloni The Middle English Breton Lays and the Mists of Origin; C.Vial Enquiries into the Textual History of the Seventeenth-Century Sir Lambewell (British Library, Additional 27897); C.St?vanovitch Elucidations: Bringing to Light the Aesthetic Underwriting of the Mati?re de Bretagne in John Boorman's Excalibur ; J-M.Elsholz

Given the quality and freshness of these individual essays, it would be churlish to object that the connecting theme of the palimpsest occassionally seems less than integral to the contributions of a few of the articles. In fact, Palimpsests and the Literary Imagination of Medieval England stands as a very worthy tribute to an eminent scholar of early medieval literature. - Speculum

These eleven original essays scrutinize the subject ofl³*