<<
>You can then go on (that is, One can; I certainly can't) to assert some
>sort
of dating of the Original Oral Text, based upon this principle.<
Oh my dear Christopher, you lovely guy, how can one have an Original ORAL
TEXT?.
>>
Nit-picky, dave!
We can postulate a period of oral transmission in which the poem evolves, to
a point when it is first written down. This would be the Beowulf MS as we
have it (or an earlier MS from which that was copied).
In "Original Oral Text", Christopher is presumably referring to the
end-point of the oral tradition, which would itself probably reflect
linguistic aspects of the earlier period(s) of composition and evolution.
Seems pretty transparent to me. <g>
Robin
|