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The intricacies and exceptions of high vowel deletion in Old English have been the subject of much debate in recent historical phonology. Traditional philological handbooks such as Campbell (1959) describe the process within the assumptions of the Neogrammarian tradition. As such, high vowel deletion has been described as a phonological process that removes historically high and synchronically unstressed vowels after a heavy syllable, or two light syllables. However, the descriptions in these handbooks also reveal that exceptions are common, and as per the Neogrammarian tradition, these are usually assumed to be the result of analogy. In contrast, recent studies have sought to account for the exceptions in a way that lends more explanatory power (e.g. Stratal Optimality accounts including Bermúdez-Otero 2005). Such accounts have shown that there is more to the exceptions than analogy, and that phonological rules, as their synchronic activity declines, can become entangled with other morphological and phonological conditioning, due to the high levels of surface opacity that causes them to become unlearnable. Many of the accounts of high vowel deletion have focused on the West Saxon of Alfred (Early WS) and Ælfric (late WS), and recent descriptions of high vowel deletion have largely focused upon the noun declensions (e.g. Bermúdez-Otero in prep) and the weak verb preterites (Minkova 2012). In this study, I focus in particular upon the behaviour of high vowel deletion in the strong and weak verbs; including the past participles and both the present and preterites. The selected data represent the Early West Saxon dialect and also the Late Northumbrian dialect found in the Lindisfarne Gospel gloss. Discussion of the process as found in nouns and adjectives will also be incorporated. The study has two larger aims: 1. To provide an analysis of syncope for newly collected data sets from Early West Saxon and Lindisfarne verbs, and 2. To contribute to the debate surrounding how to account for morphophonological interaction within inflexional paradigms. The data reveal evidence to show that high vowel deletion is indeed suffering from the demise of its original phonological conditions in the verbs. It is not argued however that full lexicalization has yet taken place throughout the verbs. Instead, the data present a range of degrees of morphologization, within which the original phonological conditions have become supplemented by additional morphological conditions. Additional phonological conditioning is also in evidence. The Lindisfarne strong past participles, it is argued, represent a morphological category within which weight-based syncope is synchronically blocked. The wider question of how and why morphological and phonological conditions come to be added to existing phonological processes is addressed, and I argue that such phenomena result from unsustainable levels of opacity in the grammar (Anderson 1989), and that a theoretical framework that allows for the interaction of phonology and morphology within the grammar is necessary. The Optimality Theoretic analyses proposed in this study have the benefit of accounting for instances of phonologization through constraint interaction. It is also argued that the ways in which morphological category determines a) the way in which a phonological condition applies, and b) whether it applies at all, is best analysed using cophonological analyses (Anttila 2002a etc.).

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This thesis examines some projects of moral regulation, implemented by the agents of the church and king in the late Anglo-Saxon period, which sought to modify and govern marital conduct. Theories of moral regulation are analysed in the Introduction, which also examines Germanic marriage practices, as far as they can be recovered, and the Anglo-Saxon church’s inherited attitudes towards marriage. Manuscripts and texts are examined firstly as projects of moral regulation, and secondly as projects which attempted to alter marital behaviour. In Chapter 1, moral regulation is situated within the context of the Benedictine reform through the examination of one manuscript – Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 201 – as a case-study in the cooperative efforts of the church and king to regulate society. In particular, the legislative and penitential texts which are compiled in MS 201 bear witness to the tendency in late Anglo-Saxon England for legislation to be moralised, and for morality to be legislated. MS 201 also includes the unique copy of the Old English translation of Apollonius of Tyre, and the marital morality inscribed therein perhaps accounts for its inclusion in this predominantly Wulfstanian manuscript. In Chapter 2 the riddles recorded in the Exeter Book are interpreted as literary exercises in regulation. This chapter establishes the possible moral and regulatory agenda of the Exeter Book riddles by offering a new interpretation of, and solution to, one riddle. It also analyses the marriages made manifest in some of the so-called ‘double entendre’ riddles, which regulate the moral relationship following Pauline exegesis: emphasis in these riddles is on the sanctity of marriage, wifely obedience, and the payment of the conjugal debt. Conversely, Ælfric, in his Lives of Saints, idealises marriage as characterised by the absence of all sexual relations. In his Life of St Agnes (examined in Chapter 3), and in his Lives of married saints (SS Julian and Basilissa, SS Cecilia and Valerian, and SS Chrysanthus and Daria, examined in Chapter 4), Ælfric makes non-sexual, companionable, and loving marriage morally paradigmatic. Whilst both marriage and morality have been studied by modern critics, neither topic has inspired extended, specific study (with a few, notable, exceptions), and the nexus between these two topics has been hitherto unacknowledged. Although new, and often profound, insight is gained into Anglo-Saxon texts by considering them in the context of moral regulation, the morality they propose, as well as the regulatory process used to impose that morality, varies across context, text, genre, and author. This conclusion is also true for marital morality, Anglo-Saxon perceptions of which differed in each of the texts chosen for evaluation. This thesis does not claim to be comprehensive; nor does it attempt to synthesise attitudes towards marriage and morality, since a synthesis does not do justice to the richness or complexity with which this topic was treated. It is hoped that this thesis will provide insight into not only individual Anglo-Saxon attitudes towards marriage but also processes of regulation and social control, and, indeed, into the intersection between attitudes and processes.

This dissertation investigates through the paradigms of the opus geminatum genre the relationship of the Old English verse Andreas to its potential exemplars, influences and subsequent renderings. The study focuses specifically upon the ways in which inherited textual dynamics of the opus geminatum—a pair of texts, one in verse and one in prose, which ostensibly treat the same subject—contribute to substantive and stylistic parallels or deviations between Andreas and these other texts. The first chapter positions the paradigm of the opus geminatum alongside the ongoing discussions about the relationships both of internal elements within Andreas, and between Andreas and its Latin or Old English analogues. It provides a detailed overview of the opus geminatum as this grows out of late antique traditions of paraphrase and into the distinctive and highly nuanced genre which Anglo-Saxon authors made their own. It argues that amidst the debates about Andreas’ relationship to other texts, the opus geminatum affords both an historically appropriate and potentially very productive paradigm. The second chapter considers within this paradigm the interplay of content and style between Andreas and what is often thought to be its closest Latin exemplar found in the Casanatensis manuscript, for I contend here that the shift in style, from Latin prose to Old English verse, bears a necessary, dramatic and consistently overlooked influence upon the content of the Old English Andreas, changing not only how one reads that content, but the very substantive nature of the content itself. In Chapter Three the discussion shifts to the relationship Andreas has with an indigenous work, Beowulf, for which a number of recent studies have laid a new groundwork which suggests exciting possibilities for analysis, most significantly at the formulaic level, exploring the tension between explicit oral and literary indebtedness between the two poems. Finally, in Chapter Four the focus shifts to a comparison between the verse Andreas and its Old English prose version of the legend, in MS Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 198, fols. 386r–394v, allowing one to explore in concrete detail the assertions which opus geminatum writers like Alcuin made about the difference and affinities between prose and verse treatments of opus geminatum texts. My conclusion draws together the broad tendencies mapped throughout this inquiry and considers the intrinsically relational nature of a text like Andreas. It argues in light of uncovered evidence for the efficacy and flexibility of the methods intrinsic to the opus geminatum as a highly appropriate analytical lens and explores from the broad perspective how this paradigm opens numerous horizons of engagement, such as with the embedded language of the liturgy in MS Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 198, or the self-conscious investment of secular literary traditions in Beowulf with Christian literary projects, such as Andreas.

This study examines English eschatological homilies of the later twelfth century and their adaptation of both Anglo-Saxon traditions and sources introduced after the Norman Conquest. Later and non-homiletic texts are also discussed when these give clues to the continued prevalence of Anglo-Saxon and twelfth-century eschatological traditions in the later Middle Ages. Chapter 1 introduces the eschatology of the Anglo-Saxon homilists, describes English homily manuscripts written ca. 1150–1200, summarizes scholarly opinions on these texts, and details the author’s approach to the texts’ eschatological ideas. Chapter 2 examines the ‘Visit to the Tomb’ motif, which deeply influenced Anglo-Saxon depictions of individual mortality. Two early Middle English texts––Lambeth III and a treatise on the vices and virtues––contain versions of the motif that indicate a familiarity with the earlier homilies, though they also adapt the ‘Visit to the Tomb’ in new ways. The Old English texts in British Library, Cotton Vespasian D. xiv are the focus of Chapter 3. These include a description of the coming of Antichrist, the first English text of the ‘Fifteen Signs before Doomsday,’ and a typological interpretation of the Babylonian captivity. These pieces draw on both the Old English homilists and works unknown in England until ca. 1100, suggesting that twelfth-century English homilists did not sense any tension in combining ideas from pre- and post-Conquest traditions. Chapter 4 describes the Middle English reflexes of two Doomsday motifs common in the Old English homilies––the ‘Three Hosts of Doomsday’ and the ‘Four Angels of Judgment.’ The persistence of such motifs in later medieval England raises the possibility of a significant influence of Old English works on Middle English homiletic eschatology. The Conclusions section addresses this issue in further detail and suggests avenues of future research, while restating the importance of the twelfth-century homilies for the study of medieval English religious literature.

This dissertation investigates through the paradigms of the opus geminatum genre the relationship of the Old English verse Andreas to its potential exemplars, influences and subsequent renderings. The study focuses specifically upon the ways in which inherited textual dynamics of the opus geminatum—a pair of texts, one in verse and one in prose, which ostensibly treat the same subject—contribute to substantive and stylistic parallels or deviations between Andreas and these other texts. The first chapter positions the paradigm of the opus geminatum alongside the ongoing discussions about the relationships both of internal elements within Andreas, and between Andreas and its Latin or Old English analogues. It provides a detailed overview of the opus geminatum as this grows out of late antique traditions of paraphrase and into the distinctive and highly nuanced genre which Anglo-Saxon authors made their own. It argues that amidst the debates about Andreas’ relationship to other texts, the opus geminatum affords both an historically appropriate and potentially very productive paradigm. The second chapter considers within this paradigm the interplay of content and style between Andreas and what is often thought to be its closest Latin exemplar found in the Casanatensis manuscript, for I contend here that the shift in style, from Latin prose to Old English verse, bears a necessary, dramatic and consistently overlooked influence upon the content of the Old English Andreas, changing not only how one reads that content, but the very substantive nature of the content itself. In Chapter Three the discussion shifts to the relationship Andreas has with an indigenous work, Beowulf, for which a number of recent studies have laid a new groundwork which suggests exciting possibilities for analysis, most significantly at the formulaic level, exploring the tension between explicit oral and literary indebtedness between the two poems. Finally, in Chapter Four the focus shifts to a comparison between the verse Andreas and its Old English prose version of the legend, in MS Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 198, fols. 386r–394v, allowing one to explore in concrete detail the assertions which opus geminatum writers like Alcuin made about the difference and affinities between prose and verse treatments of opus geminatum texts. My conclusion draws together the broad tendencies mapped throughout this inquiry and considers the intrinsically relational nature of a text like Andreas. It argues in light of uncovered evidence for the efficacy and flexibility of the methods intrinsic to the opus geminatum as a highly appropriate analytical lens and explores from the broad perspective how this paradigm opens numerous horizons of engagement, such as with the embedded language of the liturgy in MS Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 198, or the self-conscious investment of secular literary traditions in Beowulf with Christian literary projects, such as Andreas.

Inaug.-Diss.--Albert-Ludwigs-Universität zu Freiburg i. Br. / Bibliography: p. 336-351.