Sunday, September 20, 2009

An Embarrassing Compliment and a New Bleg

Well, trying to complete two papers and prepare for the job market, so posting, answering emails and the like have taken a back seat. But I had an winsome embarrassment recently I thought I'd post.

I have a friend earning her PhD at a foreign uni thousands of miles away. I do not know her adviser or this adviser's work. But my friend is doing a chapter on Aelfric....and adviser suggested that she look up this Larry Swain fellow who has done some work on Aelfric recently.....which cracked my friend up...I mean, she was in my wedding! It made me laugh too, but nervously. How did someone whom I do not know in a country I've never visited hear about work I've not published? Sadly, I doubt that my dissertation on Aelfric will stand scrutiny from real scholars; I'd like to think I can do much better in future (I suppose most of us had or have that feeling). At the same time that I want to run and hide my diss from public view, I'm also a bit chuffed that a scholar in a foreign country whom I do not otherwise know has heard of me....like celebrity, any press is good press?

On the bleg side of things, I'm compiling a list of important manuscripts and inscriptions from the early medieval period, 400-1100. What do you folks think are the most important items in that category?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Manuscripts of anything from England?

The Moore Bede would have to be up there. I believe its within 10 years of Bede's death. Of course, the other great books - Lindisfarne gospels, Litchfield gospels, Book of Cerne, Durham Liber Vitae.

Carin said...

Also, the St. Petersburg/Leningrad Bede. Codex Amiatinus. Codex Sangallensis 914 (copy of Charlemagne's copy of the RB). Parker Chronicle.

Are you including lost manuscripts?

theswain said...

I have, I think, things from England (at least as concerns manuscripts, inscriptions not so much) fairly well covered, though probably missing some things from the later period. Its outside England where I'm behind and don't have the library resources at the moment....

And I hadn't thought about lost manuscripts, I could make a separate category for those...suggestions?

Carin said...

Lost mss: Cassiodorus's Codex Grandior would be a biggie. I'm thinking not just of things we wish we had, but things we know were influential within the period.

Will think about others...

Jerusha said...

How? Because folks in your field talk to each other -- and their friends talk to their friends ....

I've not published my dissertation yet (on Trillium) for many of the same reasons -- I'm fairly certain that my statistics won't stand up.