Byrhtferth’s Muses
2017; Oxford University Press; Volume: 64; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1093/notesj/gjx072
ISSN1471-6941
Autores Tópico(s)Medieval European Literature and History
ResumoBYRHTFERTH’s use of Boethius’s De consolatione philosophiae has already been demonstrated by Michael Lapidge, who finds a dozen borrowings from Boethius in Byrhtferth’s Historia regum, seven in the Vita S. Oswaldi, and one in the Vita S. Ecgwini.1 However, Lapidge and Peter Baker, co-editors of the most recent edition of Byrhtferth’s Enchiridion, have only found one borrowing from the De consolatione in that text, a computus text with frequent digressions on other topics from alphabets to numerology.2 Malcolm Godden argues that Byrhtferth and others used the De consolatione (and its glosses) not to teach but in pursuing their own, more advanced interests.3 Yet teaching and more learned play with allusions need not be mutually exclusive. Byrhtferth’s penchant for combining sources has obscured a second borrowing from the De consolatione in his Enchiridion: he adapts Boethius’s dismissal of the Muses. Baker and Lapidge identified Aldhelm’s Carmen de virginitate as the major source of the passage in which Byrhtferth sends the Muses packing. Lapidge has also demonstrated in detail that Byrhtferth used a glossed text of Aldhelm and incorporated some of the glosses into his flowery passage.4 One cannot deny Aldhelm’s influence on Byrhtferth’s passage. Aldhelm is the source of specific words, phrases, and allusions. Aldhelm wrote, ‘Non rogo ruricolas versus et commata Musas / Nec peto Castalidas metrorum cantica nimphas …’ (353, lines 23–24; ‘I do not ask rural Muses for verses and caesuras / Nor do I implore the Castalian nymphs for songs in metre …’).5 Byrhtferth begins his passage on the Muses, ‘Ic hate gewitan fram me þa m remen þe synt si e geciged, and eac þa Castalidas nymphas (þæt synt dunylfa)>’ (3.1.205–6; ‘I order to depart from me the mermaids who are called Sirens, and also the Castalian nymphs (who are mountain-elves) …’), taking not only the connection of the Muses with poetry and song but also the word ‘Castalidas’ directly from Aldhelm.6 In another work, the prose De virginitate, Aldhelm said that Cecilia turned a deaf ear to Sirens; in the corresponding passage in the verse, he dropped the reference to Sirens but included the word ‘Pierio’, an allusion to the Muses; scholars have thus found references in Aldhelm both to Muses and to Sirens.7 This second passage might have encouraged Byrhtferth to conflate Muses and Sirens.
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