Palimpsests and the Literary Imagination of Medieval England

Abstract

"Witnesses to the disappearance of a text, palimpsest manuscripts bear the marks of their own genesis, for their original inscription was rubbed out and written over on the same parchment. Erasure is a prerequisite of reinscription; destruction paves the way for renewal. Thus the palimpsest is an image of the processes of revision and accretion which shape medieval literary production. This collection explores analogies of erasure and rewriting observed in editorial and literary practices underlying the production of texts from medieval England. Whether palimpsests are the primary focus of study or serve as a metaphor for various phenomena of loss and accumulation, all the essays investigate the process of reinscription."-- Homage to André Crépin, membre de l'institut, honorary OBE -- Introduction : Palimpsests and "palimpsestuous" reinscriptions / Raeleen Chai-Elsholz -- pt. I. Permanence and Impermanence of Writing on the Page -- 1. An Anglo-Saxon Palimpsest from Fleury : Orleans, Bibliotheque Municipale MS 342 (290) / Adrian Papahagi -- 2. Recovering Anglo-Saxon Erasures : Some Questions, Tools, and Techniques / Peter A. Stokes -- 3. Some Psalter Glosses in Their Immediate Context / Jane Roberts -- 4. The Palimpsest and Old English Homiletic Composition / Paul E. Szarmach -- 5. "Ic Beda" ... "Cwæð Beda" : Reinscribing Bede in the Old English Historia ecclesiastica gentis anglorum / Sharon M. Rowley -- 6. Vernacular Engravings in Late Medieval England / Florence Bourgne -- pt. II. Impermanence and Accumulation in the Literary Imagination -- 7. Rewriting Genres : Beowulf as Epic Romance / Leo Carruthers -- 8. Palimpsestic Philomela : Reinscription in Chaucer's "Legend of Philomela" / Gila Aloni -- 9. The Middle English Breton Lays and the Mists of Origin / Claire Vial -- 10. Enquiries into the Textual History of the Seventeenth-Century Sir Lambewell (London, British Library, Additional 27897) / Colette Stevanovitch -- 11. Elucidations : Bringing to Light the Aesthetic Underwriting of the Matiere de Bretagne in John Boorman's Excalibur / Jean-Marc Elsholz.