Quoting Christopher Walker:
> Kiernan, I think, wants to see Beowulf as part of the Blickling Codex.
For anyone still remotely interested in this, it appears that Kiernan's
central argument is actually (surprisingly) available online:
http://www.uky.edu/~kiernan/Wiglaf/Wiglaf.htm
Unless I missed something, while chortling heartily at the editorial
emmendation of Hunferth to Unferth, unless I've missed something, Kiernan
doesn't seem to engage at all with the [g]/[y] // "g" alliteration question.
Odd that, but.
[To be fair, I think that Kiernan's piece here is clealy written. Just that
to me it's curate's egg-ish, wrong in parts.]
Oh, apparently the *avoidance of [y]/[g] alliteration occurs at least as
early as texts, such as Brunaburgh, dating from about 970.
(I owe this information to a monograph to which I was directed by Judy
Prince -- ALLITERATION AND SOUND CHANGE IN EARLY ENGLISH by Donka Minkova.)
So we have then (or do we?) a _terminus ad quem_ of *at least 970, a bit
before the Blickling Scribe(s) got into the act.
Robin
|