Contents iii SAMANTHA ZACHER Preaching the Converted: The Style and Rhetoric of the Vercelli Book Homilies UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London iv Contents www.utppublishing.com © University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2009 Toronto Buffalo London Printed in Canada ISBN 978-0-8020-9158-1 Printed on acid-free paper Toronto Anglo-Saxon Series Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Zacher, Samantha, 1973– Preaching the converted : the style and rhetoric of the Vercelli Book Homilies / Samantha Zacher. (Toronto Anglo-Saxon series ; 1) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8020-9158-1 1. English prose literature – Old English, ca. 450–1100 – Criticism, Textual. 2. Sermons, English (Old) – Criticism, Textual. I. Title. II. Series: Toronto Anglo-Saxon series ; 1 ′ PR1495.Z33 2009 829.8009 C2008-907491-2 The author and publisher greatly acknowledge a subvention granted by the Hull Memorial Publication Fund of Cornell University. University of Toronto Press gratefully acknowledges the financial assistance of the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto, in the publication of this book. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publish- ing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its publish- ing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP). Contents v For my Mother and Father, Linda and Morris This page intentionally left blank Contents vii Contents Acknowledgments ix Abbreviations xiii List of Manuscripts Cited According to Scragg’s Sigla xv List of Tables xvii Preface xix 1 Locating the Vercelli Homilies: Their Place in the Book, and the Book in Its Place 3 2 Reinventing the Past: Originality and the Vercelli Homilies 30 3 Seeing Double: The Repetition of Themes and Text in the Vercelli Book 63 4 ‘Where Are They Now?’: The Sources and Techniques of Adaptation and Compilation in the Vercelli Book 106 5 The ‘Body and Soul’ of the Vercelli Book: The Heart of the Corpus 140 6 ‘For the Sake of Beauty and Utility’: The Place of Figurative Language in the Vercelli Homilies 179 7 At a Crossroads: Generic Ambiguity in the Guthlac Narrative of the Vercelli Book 225 8 Conclusion: Rhetorical Models and Modes of Style 269 viii Contents Appendix 1: The Contents of the Vercelli Homilies and Relevant Variant Texts 280 Appendix 2: Divisions in the Vercelli Book 287 Bibliography 295 General Index 325 Index of Passages Cited 345 Contents ix Acknowledgments This project on the Vercelli homilies has come a long way since I first began it in my PhD dissertation at the University of Toronto. I am still inestimably grateful to the members of my thesis committee, Andy Orchard, Toni Healey, and David Townsend, who not only gave me tremendous advice and professional encouragement during the time I worked on this project at the University of Toronto, but who continued to be supportive as the book came to fruition. I likewise thank Toni Healey, whose exquisite class on the Vercelli Book first inspired my inter- est in the subject, Roberta Frank, who supervised me in the early months of my dissertation research, and, at the project for the Dictionary of Old English, Joan Holland and David and Ian McDougall, who over the years provided me with important references and always stimulating leads. As the book has nearly doubled in length since I first wrote the disser- tation, so has my gratitude and indebtedness to those scholars who have given me advice and suggestions along the way. I am especially grateful to Mark Amodio, Andy Orchard, Tom Hall, Tom Hill, Paul Remley, Jane Roberts, Don Scragg, and Charlie Wright for their meticulous readings of my work. Their contributions have improved it immensely. I also wish to thank those scholars with whom I’ve had especially provocative discus- sions about the Vercelli Book (all of whom are excellent Anglo-Saxonists in their own right), especially Anthony Adams, Sarah Downey, Damian Fleming, Mike Fox, Steve Harris, Aaron Kleist, Patrick McBrine, Robin Norris, Andy Scheil, Manish Sharma, and Emily Thornbury. In the same breath, I mention a few of the long list of mentors, teachers, and friends at both Vassar College and Cornell University who have been supportive. I thank here especially Mark Amodio, Robert DeMaria, and Ken Weedin at Vassar College, who first inspired me to conduct my graduate work in B htt b | i i l t x Acknowledgments the field of Old English literature, and with whom I returned to teach at Vassar College for three wonderful years. Since coming to Cornell I have found new fonts of inspiration. I include here the stellar medieval faculty, especially Andy Galloway, Tom Hill, Masha Raskolnikov, and Will Sayers, who have all made helpful contributions. My thanks also go to Laura Brown and Molly Hite, who have been vital mentors, and to my colleagues Peter Gilgen, Jenny Mann, Rayna Kalas, and Lyrae Van Clief- Stefanon, who have been especially encouraging. I also draw deep and constant inspiration from my engagement with my graduate students at Cornell, who have taken classes with me on a variety of Old English sub- jects (including the Vercelli Book), and whose insightful comments and questions have taught me a great deal. I give special thanks to Matt Spears for providing the indexes for this book, and to Katie Compton, Danielle Cudmore, Will Rogers, and Danielle Wu for their enthusiastic support. Of course my deepest personal gratitude is to my parents, and so the book is properly dedicated to them. They have been supportive of all of my scholarly endeavours, and have sustained me with their love when the pressure was immense. I am also deeply grateful to my sister Rebecca, and to Venus, who provided frofor for many years. The book is also devoted, in a less formal way, to Donald G. Scragg, Paul E. Szarmach, and Éamonn Ó Carragáin, whose work on the Vercelli Book has been indispensable to me. I could not have undertaken this project without the excellent editions produced by Don and Paul, and I am grateful for the insights I gleaned from reading Éamonn’s doctoral dissertation on the Vercelli homilies. I also include in this dedication Andy Orchard, whose genius with respect to Old English literature has been a constant source of inspiration to me. I am utterly grateful for his careful and tireless reading of multiple drafts of the book, and other arti- cles. Even now, several years away from the dissertation, I cannot express my gratitude sufficiently. I am likewise appreciative to have received several academic grants and opportunities that made research for this book possible and sustainable. I include here the Research Travel Grant awarded by the University of Toronto, which allowed me to consult the Vercelli Book in Italy for the first time (in July 2002), and also the extremely generous Affinito-Stewart Grant, awarded by Cornell University, which permitted me to return to Italy for extended vital research on the manuscript (in September 2006). I also benefited greatly from my participation in the NEH Summer Insti- tute ‘Anglo-Saxon England,’ run by Paul E. Szarmach in Cambridge, England (July 2004), which not only allowed me to think more deeply B htt b | i i l t Acknowledgments xi about the wider contexts for my project, but also to spend magnificent hours in the Corpus Christi Library at Cambridge researching MS CCCC 201. Finally, I wish to thank Suzanne Rancourt, Barbara Porter, and John St James at University of Toronto Press for their hard work on this project. B htt b | i i l t This page intentionally left blank B htt b | i i l t