The Peterborough Version Of The Anglo Saxon Chronicle

An examination of the linguistic and cultural construction of one of the texts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is among the earliest vernacular chronicles of Western Europe and remains an essential source for scholars of Anglo-Saxon and Norman England. With the publication in 2004 of a new edition of the Peterborough text, all six major manuscript versions of the Chronicle are now available in the Collaborative Edition. Reading the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle therefore presents a timely reassessment of current scholarly thinking on this most complex and most foundational of documents. This volume of collected essays examines the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle through four main aspects: the production of the text, its language, the literary character of the work, and the Chronicle as historical writing. The individual studies not only exemplify the different scholarly approaches to the Chronicle but they also cover the full chronological range of the text(s), as well as offering new contributions to well-established debates and exploring fresh avenues of research. The interdisciplinary and wide-ranging nature of the scholarship behind the volume allows Reading the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle to convey the immense complexity and variety of the Chronicle, a document that survives in multiple versions and was written in multiple places, times, and political contexts.

New evidence for the relationship between the manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Ranks among the best work on the vernacular texts undertaken this century. In its clarity of thought and expression it is a model to emulate. MEDIUM AEVUM G.P. Cubbin's important introduction accompanying this editionargues for MS D having been created in about 1060 by copying two other Chronicle -manuscripts, thus reducing the number of versions of the Chronicle to three, and simplifying issues of interrelationship. Strong evidence is produced for the work being carriedout in or near Worcester; and another new and unexpected finding is that D itself became the source of other versions of the Chronicle for the mid-eleventh century. Linguistic analysis considers unusual features of the manuscript and supports the new history presented here. Dr G.P. CUBBIN is Lecturer in German at the University of Cambridge.

A semi-diplomatic edition of BL MS Cotton Tiberius A vi, probably written in 977-8, probably at Abingdon. It is the first complete and separate publication of B Version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, B being the primary witness to a 10th-century recension of the Chronicle, and an authority of greater textual importance than MS A for the period from 924. `One may recommend this book as a happy illustration of how much useful and interesting information a diligent editor may prize from an apparently unpromising source — The general editors have clearly given much thought to the system of textual and editorial conventions, which are in every case clear and readily intelligible'PERITIA.

Eighth volume in the collaborative edition - early 12C Canterbury manuscript. The introduction details other work by the same hand and his role in re-shaping Anglo-Saxon history. This edition presents a bilingual (Old English and Latin) version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle written by a monk of Christ Church, Canterbury, probably in the first decade of the twelfth century. Though the Old English andLatin texts have been printed separately, this is the first edition to present the text intended by its compiler, who also produced the Latin translation and wrote the single extant manuscript. The introduction demonstrates that same monk who was responsible for this bilingual chronicle also revised MS A (the Parker Chronicle) and an ancestor of MS E (the Peterborough Chronicle) and was a forger of documents: he thus is significant as an early Norman reviser of Anglo-Saxon history. PETER BAKER is Professor of English, University of Virginia.