Electronic Beowulf EditionのMS Readingについて

概要

論文の詳細を見る
The extant manuscript of Beowulf is the only text. It means that we have limited other sources of information to rely on. Moreover, it has deteriorated to a great extent due to the long years of transmission and the damage caused by the fire. Therefore, there exists in the text quite a few illegible parts, which need restoration, and also dubious parts, which need emendation. So until now a number of scholars have published various editions according to their interpretation. Among them, Kevin Kiernan is the most conservative editor, who argues that the MS should be more respected. So in his Electronic Beowulf he makes an attempt to read the text at its face value. In this paper some features of his edition of Beowulf are introduced and a few problems in his MS-reading are discussed.