Preaching the Converted: The Style and Rhetoric of the Vercelli Book Homilies

375 Pages·1.288 MB·English

by  Samantha Zacher

Contents iii
SAMANTHA ZACHER
Preaching the Converted:
The Style and Rhetoric of the
Vercelli Book Homilies
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS
Toronto Buffalo London
iv Contents
www.utppublishing.com
© University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2009
Toronto Buffalo London
Printed in Canada
ISBN 978-0-8020-9158-1
Printed on acid-free paper
Toronto Anglo-Saxon Series
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Zacher, Samantha, 1973–
Preaching the converted : the style and rhetoric of the Vercelli Book Homilies /
Samantha Zacher.
(Toronto Anglo-Saxon series ; 1)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8020-9158-1
1. English prose literature – Old English, ca. 450–1100 – Criticism, Textual.
2. Sermons, English (Old) – Criticism, Textual. I. Title. II. Series: Toronto
Anglo-Saxon series ; 1
′
PR1495.Z33 2009 829.8009 C2008-907491-2
The author and publisher greatly acknowledge a subvention granted by the Hull
Memorial Publication Fund of Cornell University.
University of Toronto Press gratefully acknowledges the financial assistance of
the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto, in the publication of
this book.
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publish-
ing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its publish-
ing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing
Industry Development Program (BPIDP).
Contents v
For my Mother and Father,
Linda and Morris
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Contents vii
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Abbreviations xiii
List of Manuscripts Cited According to Scragg’s Sigla xv
List of Tables xvii
Preface xix
1 Locating the Vercelli Homilies: Their Place in the Book,
and the Book in Its Place 3
2 Reinventing the Past: Originality and the Vercelli Homilies 30
3 Seeing Double: The Repetition of Themes and Text in the
Vercelli Book 63
4 ‘Where Are They Now?’: The Sources and Techniques of
Adaptation and Compilation in the Vercelli Book 106
5 The ‘Body and Soul’ of the Vercelli Book: The Heart of the
Corpus 140
6 ‘For the Sake of Beauty and Utility’: The Place of Figurative
Language in the Vercelli Homilies 179
7 At a Crossroads: Generic Ambiguity in the Guthlac Narrative of
the Vercelli Book 225
8 Conclusion: Rhetorical Models and Modes of Style 269
viii Contents
Appendix 1: The Contents of the Vercelli Homilies and Relevant
Variant Texts 280
Appendix 2: Divisions in the Vercelli Book 287
Bibliography 295
General Index 325
Index of Passages Cited 345
Contents ix
Acknowledgments
This project on the Vercelli homilies has come a long way since I first
began it in my PhD dissertation at the University of Toronto. I am still
inestimably grateful to the members of my thesis committee, Andy
Orchard, Toni Healey, and David Townsend, who not only gave me
tremendous advice and professional encouragement during the time I
worked on this project at the University of Toronto, but who continued
to be supportive as the book came to fruition. I likewise thank Toni
Healey, whose exquisite class on the Vercelli Book first inspired my inter-
est in the subject, Roberta Frank, who supervised me in the early months
of my dissertation research, and, at the project for the Dictionary of Old
English, Joan Holland and David and Ian McDougall, who over the years
provided me with important references and always stimulating leads.
As the book has nearly doubled in length since I first wrote the disser-
tation, so has my gratitude and indebtedness to those scholars who have
given me advice and suggestions along the way. I am especially grateful to
Mark Amodio, Andy Orchard, Tom Hall, Tom Hill, Paul Remley, Jane
Roberts, Don Scragg, and Charlie Wright for their meticulous readings of
my work. Their contributions have improved it immensely. I also wish to
thank those scholars with whom I’ve had especially provocative discus-
sions about the Vercelli Book (all of whom are excellent Anglo-Saxonists
in their own right), especially Anthony Adams, Sarah Downey, Damian
Fleming, Mike Fox, Steve Harris, Aaron Kleist, Patrick McBrine, Robin
Norris, Andy Scheil, Manish Sharma, and Emily Thornbury. In the same
breath, I mention a few of the long list of mentors, teachers, and friends
at both Vassar College and Cornell University who have been supportive.
I thank here especially Mark Amodio, Robert DeMaria, and Ken Weedin
at Vassar College, who first inspired me to conduct my graduate work in
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x Acknowledgments
the field of Old English literature, and with whom I returned to teach at
Vassar College for three wonderful years. Since coming to Cornell I have
found new fonts of inspiration. I include here the stellar medieval faculty,
especially Andy Galloway, Tom Hill, Masha Raskolnikov, and Will
Sayers, who have all made helpful contributions. My thanks also go to
Laura Brown and Molly Hite, who have been vital mentors, and to my
colleagues Peter Gilgen, Jenny Mann, Rayna Kalas, and Lyrae Van Clief-
Stefanon, who have been especially encouraging. I also draw deep and
constant inspiration from my engagement with my graduate students at
Cornell, who have taken classes with me on a variety of Old English sub-
jects (including the Vercelli Book), and whose insightful comments and
questions have taught me a great deal. I give special thanks to Matt Spears
for providing the indexes for this book, and to Katie Compton, Danielle
Cudmore, Will Rogers, and Danielle Wu for their enthusiastic support.
Of course my deepest personal gratitude is to my parents, and so the
book is properly dedicated to them. They have been supportive of all of
my scholarly endeavours, and have sustained me with their love when the
pressure was immense. I am also deeply grateful to my sister Rebecca, and
to Venus, who provided frofor for many years.
The book is also devoted, in a less formal way, to Donald G. Scragg,
Paul E. Szarmach, and Éamonn Ó Carragáin, whose work on the Vercelli
Book has been indispensable to me. I could not have undertaken this
project without the excellent editions produced by Don and Paul, and I
am grateful for the insights I gleaned from reading Éamonn’s doctoral
dissertation on the Vercelli homilies. I also include in this dedication
Andy Orchard, whose genius with respect to Old English literature has
been a constant source of inspiration to me. I am utterly grateful for his
careful and tireless reading of multiple drafts of the book, and other arti-
cles. Even now, several years away from the dissertation, I cannot express
my gratitude sufficiently.
I am likewise appreciative to have received several academic grants and
opportunities that made research for this book possible and sustainable. I
include here the Research Travel Grant awarded by the University of
Toronto, which allowed me to consult the Vercelli Book in Italy for the
first time (in July 2002), and also the extremely generous Affinito-Stewart
Grant, awarded by Cornell University, which permitted me to return to
Italy for extended vital research on the manuscript (in September 2006). I
also benefited greatly from my participation in the NEH Summer Insti-
tute ‘Anglo-Saxon England,’ run by Paul E. Szarmach in Cambridge,
England (July 2004), which not only allowed me to think more deeply
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Acknowledgments xi
about the wider contexts for my project, but also to spend magnificent
hours in the Corpus Christi Library at Cambridge researching MS
CCCC 201. Finally, I wish to thank Suzanne Rancourt, Barbara Porter,
and John St James at University of Toronto Press for their hard work on
this project.
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