The Chronology and Canon of Ælfric of Eynsham

Ælfric has been well served in scholarship, enjoying an unrivaled run in terms of interest dating from the beginnings of early English scholarship in the sixteenth century, and, before that, sustained attention from copyists into the twelfth century and from readers into the later medieval period. Consequently, the Ælfric bibliography is a long one. Of course, Ælfric himself gave his audience a great deal to get their teeth into: two series of Catholic Homilies, Lives of Saints, the Grammar, the Glossary, the Colloquy, supplementary and miscellaneous homilies, letters, notes, even a charter; the list goes on.Kleist's book is intended to “offer a single set of sigla for Ælfrician scholarship” (p. ix), bringing together and rationalizing the various systems adopted by his editors, as well as to summarize the newest evidence for the Ælfrician chronology and authorship and to offer a listing of the Ælfrician contents in each manuscript known to contain such material. The list of manuscripts makes use of the siglum Y, not used by Clemoes, Godden, or Pope, to include an additional 29 manuscripts “containing works [possibly or certainly] by Ælfric” (p. xx). Kleist sensibly stops short of disrupting the sequence established by Ælfric's editors of his principal series, despite acknowledging that some entries in the new Y class perhaps more logically might be placed elsewhere. Of interest here are entries among the twelve items listed in the Early Modern transcriptions section which have been overlooked by standard reference works.The author begins with Ælfric's chronology, judiciously summarizing the views of Ælfric's great editors, identifying discrepancies, and offering revisions in the light of more recent scholarship. There is an enormous amount of patient work in this. A series of appendices follow, laying out the dissemination of the two series of Catholic Homilies.The following chapter tackles the Ælfrician corpus, described appropriately by Kleist as “nothing if not complex” (p. 6). The list as a whole includes forty-two items not in Clemoes's original chronology, the majority of which fall into the category of epitomes and abridgements, and a further thirty-four items which may or may not be associated with Ælfric. Following a brief introduction, Kleist summarizes the canon, laid out in separate sections. Each section is then introduced, its chronology summarized, and editions and manuscripts (including the existence of digital surrogates) noted. There are further tables. The miscellaneous homilies are individually described, but the major series are summarized only as a whole, which is a shame given the comprehensive treatment of these other texts. A short summary of each of Ælfric's works (which could be abstracted for the First and Second Series of Catholic Homilies from Clemoes's EETS commentary volume) would have been useful and would have permitted easier identification of themes that recur across the corpus. Although this would have added multiple pages to the book, its value would have been immeasurable. Of course, these miscellaneous pieces are summarized in this way because they, scattered across a variety of editions, are not nearly as well known as those in the major series. Some are being prepared by Kleist and Robert K. Upchurch for separate publication.Chapter 3 offers a summary description of manuscript copies of Ælfrician texts organized by the sigla established at the book's beginning, followed by a listing of their Ælfrician contents. Kleist notes that “[f]or all that Ker's Catalogue is indispensable when considering the contents of manuscripts in full, identifying Ælfrician elements therein is sometimes a labour of love” (p. 207). As one who has struggled to match textual contents of a manuscript listed by Ker with their modern identifiers, I propose a warm vote of thanks to Kleist for undertaking this work on our behalf. A final appendix offers what Kleist himself summarizes as “a snapsho[t] of current scholarship regarding the chronology of Ælfric's works” (p. 276), drawing together all the work presented elsewhere in the book. Kleist attempts to make the table easier to understand by the use of shading, though the result, with column after column colored in a dark grey unhelpfully close in hue to that of the typeface, is decidedly challenging to read for anyone whose vision has been compromised by years of manuscript study.Occasionally wryly written (“those hoping in these pages for an enjoyable Sunday afternoon read . . . should be prepared for sore disappointment” [p. 3]), elsewhere there is mixing of metaphors that Ælfric himself would, I suspect, have worked to erase: on a single paragraph on p. 7, authorial revision is murky, pace is feverish, ideas are cross-pollinated, doors are opening, and banquet tables set, all to be read to the accompaniment, one imagines, of the homilist shifting uncomfortably in his grave.This is research that makes a very significant contribution to Ælfric Studies, but whose ultimate value is circumscribed by its print format. A website strikes me as the best medium to have presented much of this material. Although Kleist works hard to try to make the dense information he presents as clear as possible and usable in a variety of ways within the strictures of the print format by repeating or re-presenting key information at different places, a variety of searchable fields would be of more use, particularly in relation to the manuscript information. A reader might want to know, for example, whether certain sequences of texts repeat within a particular set of manuscripts and whether these are interleaved with other material. As it stands, this is impossible to retrieve easily, not just because of the limiting format, but also because of the removal of even summary information relating to the anonymous texts which are part of these compilations. I return to this issue below. Kleist himself has considerable experience in working with material in a digital format: his Digital Ælfric website (http://www.sd-editions.com/aelfric/index.php) offered the opportunity to compare a set of homilies line by line across the surviving manuscript witnesses, so the advantage of this interface must have been obvious. Ælfric is worked on by scholars with a very wide range of backgrounds and research specialisms; just in my area of Language Studies, we might at various points be interested in Ælfric's own style and language and its development over time as reconstructed from the earliest manuscript witnesses, or perhaps in the development of the language in later manuscripts or more generally in wider manuscript context. A website that allows one to interrogate the enormous amount of information that Kleist has assembled here in different ways to respond to different or developing interests would have been of considerable benefit, allowing users to have made the most out of this remarkable endeavor. It would also have been easy to update: the digitization programs in train at many of our major libraries mean that more of the manuscript witnesses are likely to become accessible in the future, and it would be useful to have details in one place as they become available.On p. 3 Kleist asks a series of questions that he believes his research opens, including “what does it mean for a text to be Ælfrician?” and “[h]ow might a manuscript's contents colour audience's understanding of a work, either through the selections that immediately surround it or through recurring elements in the collection as a whole?” As it stands the book can but push the debate in a certain direction. Kleist acknowledges this himself to a degree in his introduction to the chapter on manuscript witnesses: “the following . . . offers a handy reference for those working specifically with an Ælfrician lens” (p. 207; my emphasis). By opting to include only Ælfrician contents of homiletic manuscripts, Kleist at a stroke vanishes the other anonymous works that kept Ælfric company in almost all of the surviving copies. The helpful way in which Kleist updates and presents the contents information for each manuscript means that some may not necessarily think to reengage with Ker's Catalogue to rediscover these texts. Kleist argues that “[w]hether one speaks of authorship or audience, no longer is it enough to establish the ur-text of Ælfric: a multiplicity of Ælfrics must now come into view” (p. 3). Just as crucial to issues of authorship or audience is the multiplicity of non-Ælfrics that appear alongside them; their subtraction from this account makes addressing such questions ultimately no easier

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