Volume 118, Issue 4

The article gives a transcription of the recently discovered manuscripts of Caedmon's Hymn examined by Humphreys and Ross in 1975 and printed in facsimile by Robinson and Stanley in 1991, and locates the texts within the groups proposed by Dobbie. By comparing the readings of the various manuscripts, some questions of transmission are resolved. The article goes on to examine the manuscript and linguistic evidence as a whole to determine the relationship between the different traditions and their texts. Making use of the evidence of spelling conventions, substantive variants in the texts, and the textual representation of oral tradition, a radically new stemma is proposed.

Lines 3074–75 in Beowulf have been among the most vexing lines for editors, readers, and translators of the poem. The lines' tricky lexicon, syntax, and seemingly odd location in context have generated many commentaries and emendations, but what is often overlooked or understated in these treatments is the way that features of the Beowulf -manuscript contribute to the purpose and sense of the lines. By addressing aspects of the manuscript text as crucial to our understanding of lines 3074–75, this paper draws attention to the way that the lines emphasize Beowulf's coming to a concrete knowledge of Christian order in the world. However, this paper is also interested in the procedures and processes that make possible the possibility of interpretation; for this reason, two Old English renderings and a modern English translation of lines 3074–75 in their immediate context are presented here. These different readings seek to situate the lines in the narrative of Beowulf -scholarship as much as in the narrative of the poem.

This paper looks at the background against which Thomas Hoccleve's Remonstrance against Oldcastle was written. It draws on unprinted material from British Library MS Harley 431 to demonstrate close links between the Office of the Privy Seal, where Hoccleve was employed, and Sir John Oldcastle and his wife. A re-examination of the Remonstrance , known as a “furiously orthodox” poem, suggests the possibility of ironical readings at some points.

This paper explores additional functions that can be attached to pauses in speech. While traditional concepts have focused on pauses as boundary markers for delimiting purposes and hesitation pauses as signalling the process of planning on the speaker's side, it is worth assuming that pauses can also be used as stylistic devices in order to increase the sense of anticipation on the hearer's side with regard to the information to follow. Drawing on an innovative descriptive model which is based on the identification of the prosodic and syntactic status at tone unit boundaries in the London-Lund Corpus of Spoken English (LLC), this type of pause will be exemplified and functionally analysed. Thus it will be shown that those pauses in speech which are not mere hesitation pauses may, on the one hand, fulfill a segmenting function, but also, on the other hand, a distinctive non-segmenting communicative function: this second function is subsumed under the notion of anticipation pauses .

Alfred Bammesberger und Joachim Grzega, Repetitorium zur englischen Sprachwissenschaft ; William Cowan and Jaromina Raku‡an, Source Book for Linguistics ; Bernd Kortmann, Linguistik: Essentials (Ingrid Piller) Carita Paradis, Degree Modifiers of Adjectives in Spoken British English (Manfred Markus) The Sociolinguistics Reader , ed. Jenny Cheshire and Peter Trudgill (Manfred Görlach) Gabriele Stein, John Palsgrave as Renaissance Linguist: A Pioneer in Vernacular Language Description (Thomas Kohnen) Hugh Magennis, Anglo-Saxon Appetites: Food and Drink and their Consumption in Old English and Related Literature (Andreas Fischer) Ursula Lenker, Die Westsächsische Evangelienversion und die Perikopenordnung im angelsächsischen England (Sarah Larratt Keefer) A Guide to Editing Middle English , ed. Vincent P. McCarren and Douglas Moffat (Oliver Pickering) Lawrence M. Clopper, “Songes of Rechelesnesse”: Langland and the Franciscans (Charity Scott Stokes) Peter J. Lucas, From Author to Audience: John Capgrave and Medieval Publication (Klaus Bitterling) The Long Fifteenth Century: Essays for Douglas Gray , ed. Helen Cooper and Sally Mapstone (Karl Reichl) The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain. Vol. 3: 1400–1557 , ed. Lotte Hellinga and J. B. Trapp; The Index of Middle English Prose: Ralph Hanna III, Handlist XII: Smaller Bodleian Collections; O. S. Pickering and V. M. O'Mara, Handlist XIII: Manuscripts in Lambeth Palace Library, including those formerly in Sion College Library; William Marx, Handlist XIV: Manuscripts in the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth (Helmut Gneuss) Chaucer to Spenser: An Anthology of Writings in English 1375–1575 , ed. Derek Pearsall (Dieter Mehl) Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini (Pius II), The Goodli History of the Ladye Lucres of Scene and of her Lover Eurialus , ed. E. J. Morall (Wolfgang Weiß) David J. Baker, Between Nations: Shakespeare, Spenser, Marvell, and the Question of Britain (Christian Schmitt-Kilb) J. Martin Evans, The Miltonic Moment (Martin Kuester) Pat Rogers, The Text of Great Britain: Theme and Design in Defoe's ‘Tour’ (Bernhard Klein) Matthew Campbell, Rhythm and Will in Victorian Poetry (Richard Tobias) U. C. Knoepflmacher, Ventures into Childland: Victorians, Fairy Tales, and Femininity (Joachim Frenk) Klaus Martens, Felix Paul Greves Karriere: Frederick Philip Grove in Deutschland (Walter Pache) Lee Clark Mitchell, Westerns: Making the Man in Fiction and Film (Karin Esders) (Trans)Formations of Cultural Identity in the English-Speaking World , ed. Jochen Achilles and Carmen Birkle (Tobias Döring) Dialogische Strukturen/Dialogic Structures: Festschrift für Willi Erzgräber zum 70. Geburtstag , ed. Thomas Kühn und Ursula Schaefer (Wolfgang G. Müller) Intermedialität: Theorie und Praxis eines interdisziplinären Forschungsgebiets , ed. Jörg Helbig (Julika Griem) Bildschirmfiktionen: Interferenzen zwischen Literatur und neuen Medien , ed. Julika Griem (Susanne M. Maier)