<snip>
KIERNAN DOES NOT ACCOUNT FOR THE FACT THAT THE SCRIBE
DID NOT UNDERSTAND ARCHAIC BITS OF WHAT HE COPIED.
<snip>
Actually two scribes.
Kiernan, I think, wants to see Beowulf as part of the Blickling Codex.
Beowulf's second scribe, who continued the transcription (from a bit
beyond the halfway point) may have belonged to the Blickling scriptorium.
There are also parallels between the description of Grendel's lair in
Beowulf and a description of Hell in one of the Blickling Homilies. (The
likely source is common. But was this a _direct and independent_ source for
each? Did Beowulf influence the Homily? Did the Homily influence Beowulf? Or
what?)
Kiernan places much less weight on the linguistic discrepancies within the
text, arguing (to put it very crudely) that the *author* (hah!) is both
quite late and a sort of OE Ossian or Rowley, consciously achaicising during
the composition.
CW
_______________________________________________
Dozens have gone missing, the decision taken is Elsewhere.
but yes, yes we remain as poetry, pure immateriality.
in the name of the 'current state of things' they murmur to us:
"we went for a stroll, now it's a question of marching!" But this
stroll of ours has brought us a long way off, and now
the horizon is behind us.
(from *Materiali*, Indiani Metropolitani 1977)
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