Bibliography
Charles D. (Charles Darwin)
Wright s. xx–xxi
Works authored
Based on the author's dissertation.
Theses
Contributions to journals
Wright, Charles D., and Stephen Pelle, “The alphabet of words in the Durham collectar: an edition with two new manuscript witnesses”, Traditio 72 (2017): 61–108.
abstract:
The Alphabet of Words (AW), a Latin alphabet text with an interlinear Old English gloss, occurs among the additions made to the Durham Collectar (D) by the priest Aldred in the tenth century. Previously thought to be extant only in D, and possibly by Aldred himself, AW also survives (without the OE gloss) in a Kassel manuscript (K) from the second half of the eighth century, as well as in a defective twelfth-century copy in Karlsruhe (Kr). Most of AW is also incorporated in a Latin treatise on the alphabet (“Audiuimus multos”: AM) compiled probably in the ninth century. AW belongs to the genre of “parenetic alphabet,” widely attested in Greek but also sporadically in Latin, including in a ninth-century Paris manuscript (P: BNF, lat. 2796) that shares lemmata and glosses with AW for the letters X, Y, and Z. We provide the first critical edition and translation of AW from D, K, and Kr, with variants from AM and P, together with a discussion of AW’s genre and relation to other alphabetical texts as well as a full commentary on the biblical, apocryphal, and patristic lore transmitted by AW’s lemmata and glosses on each letter.
abstract:
The Alphabet of Words (AW), a Latin alphabet text with an interlinear Old English gloss, occurs among the additions made to the Durham Collectar (D) by the priest Aldred in the tenth century. Previously thought to be extant only in D, and possibly by Aldred himself, AW also survives (without the OE gloss) in a Kassel manuscript (K) from the second half of the eighth century, as well as in a defective twelfth-century copy in Karlsruhe (Kr). Most of AW is also incorporated in a Latin treatise on the alphabet (“Audiuimus multos”: AM) compiled probably in the ninth century. AW belongs to the genre of “parenetic alphabet,” widely attested in Greek but also sporadically in Latin, including in a ninth-century Paris manuscript (P: BNF, lat. 2796) that shares lemmata and glosses with AW for the letters X, Y, and Z. We provide the first critical edition and translation of AW from D, K, and Kr, with variants from AM and P, together with a discussion of AW’s genre and relation to other alphabetical texts as well as a full commentary on the biblical, apocryphal, and patristic lore transmitted by AW’s lemmata and glosses on each letter.
Wright, Charles D., “A Doomsday passage in an Old English sermon for Lent, revisited”, Anglia 128 (2010): 28–48.
abstract:
In a 1982 article in Anglia, “A Doomsday Passage in an Old English Sermon for Lent”, J. E. Cross showed that the author of Fadda Homily no. I (HomM 5) made use of a Latin sermon on the Last Judgment falsely attributed to St. Augustine. Citing the Latin sermon from the Patrologia Latina, Cross concluded that the Old English homilist had freely modified this source by making additions from his own memory of Doomsday commonplaces. A variant text of the Latin sermon, however, proves that the homilist was translating a fuller version that accounts for most of the apparent additions, as well as for further material in the Old English homily beyond the passage isolated by Cross. The new text of the Latin homily enables a better understanding of the Old English homilist's working methods, but also raises important methodological questions for source studies.
abstract:
In a 1982 article in Anglia, “A Doomsday Passage in an Old English Sermon for Lent”, J. E. Cross showed that the author of Fadda Homily no. I (HomM 5) made use of a Latin sermon on the Last Judgment falsely attributed to St. Augustine. Citing the Latin sermon from the Patrologia Latina, Cross concluded that the Old English homilist had freely modified this source by making additions from his own memory of Doomsday commonplaces. A variant text of the Latin sermon, however, proves that the homilist was translating a fuller version that accounts for most of the apparent additions, as well as for further material in the Old English homily beyond the passage isolated by Cross. The new text of the Latin homily enables a better understanding of the Old English homilist's working methods, but also raises important methodological questions for source studies.
Wack, Mary, and Charles D. Wright, “A new Latin source for the Old English ‘Three utterances’ exemplum”, Anglo-Saxon England 20 (1991): 187–202.
abstract:
The so-called ‘Three Utterances’ exemplum, which tells of the exclamations of a good and a bad soul to the angels or demons who lead them to heaven or hell at the moment of death, was adapted independently by three Anglo-Saxon homilists. Versions of this legend survive in an Old English Rogationtide homily in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Hatton 114, 102v–105v, in a homily Be heofonwarum and be helwarum in London, British Library, Cotton Faustina A. ix, 21v–23v, and Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 302, pp. 71–3, and in a Lenten homily in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Junius 85/86, fos. 25–40. In 1935 Rudolf Willard published a study of the exemplum, with a detailed comparison between the three Old English versions, an Irish version, and a single Latin version in Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, lat. 2628 (s. xi). Two years later Willard published a second Latin version from Oxford, University College 61 (s. xiv). Other texts of the Latin sermon have subsequently come to light.
abstract:
The so-called ‘Three Utterances’ exemplum, which tells of the exclamations of a good and a bad soul to the angels or demons who lead them to heaven or hell at the moment of death, was adapted independently by three Anglo-Saxon homilists. Versions of this legend survive in an Old English Rogationtide homily in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Hatton 114, 102v–105v, in a homily Be heofonwarum and be helwarum in London, British Library, Cotton Faustina A. ix, 21v–23v, and Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 302, pp. 71–3, and in a Lenten homily in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Junius 85/86, fos. 25–40. In 1935 Rudolf Willard published a study of the exemplum, with a detailed comparison between the three Old English versions, an Irish version, and a single Latin version in Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, lat. 2628 (s. xi). Two years later Willard published a second Latin version from Oxford, University College 61 (s. xiv). Other texts of the Latin sermon have subsequently come to light.
Wright, Charles D., “The pledge of the soul: a judgment theme in Old English homiletic literature and Cynewulf's Elene”, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 91:1 (1990): 23–30.
abstract:
An Old English Rogationtide homily records a dramatic dialogue between Christ and Man at the Last Judgment, in which Christ demands a "pledge" (wed) for man's thoughts, words, and deeds. A close Latin parallel occurs in a collection of homilies edited by De Bruyne, which many scholars have considered to be of Irish origin. The basic idea that the soul (or the soul and the body) will be required as a pledge or recompense for man's deeds is encountered in several other Old English homilies. In the Judgment passage in the Epilogue of Elene, Cynewulf similarly warns that man will be required to give a pledge at Judgment, though he does not specify what pledge will be required. In Elene the Judgment theme is not elaborated in dialogue form as in the Rogationtide homily, but it does recall the Rogationtide homily's formulation of the theme and its Latin analogue in its use of the term wed (Latin arra) and the "thought, word, and deed" triad.
abstract:
An Old English Rogationtide homily records a dramatic dialogue between Christ and Man at the Last Judgment, in which Christ demands a "pledge" (wed) for man's thoughts, words, and deeds. A close Latin parallel occurs in a collection of homilies edited by De Bruyne, which many scholars have considered to be of Irish origin. The basic idea that the soul (or the soul and the body) will be required as a pledge or recompense for man's deeds is encountered in several other Old English homilies. In the Judgment passage in the Epilogue of Elene, Cynewulf similarly warns that man will be required to give a pledge at Judgment, though he does not specify what pledge will be required. In Elene the Judgment theme is not elaborated in dialogue form as in the Rogationtide homily, but it does recall the Rogationtide homily's formulation of the theme and its Latin analogue in its use of the term wed (Latin arra) and the "thought, word, and deed" triad.
Contributions to edited collections or authored works
Wright, Charles D., “From monks’ jokes to sages’ wisdom: the Joca monachorum tradition and the Irish Immacallam in dá thúarad”, in: Mary Garrison, Arpad P. Orbán, and Marco Mostert (eds), Spoken and written language: relations between Latin and the vernacular languages in the earlier Middle Ages, 24, Turnhout: Brepols, 2013. 199–225.
Wright, Charles D., “Why the left hand is longer (or shorter) than the right: some Irish analogues for an etiological legend in the Homiliary of St. Père de Chartres”, in: Virginia Blanton, and Helene Scheck (eds), Intertexts: studies in Anglo-Saxon culture presented to Paul E. Szarmach, 24, Tempe, Arizona: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2008. 161–168.
McNamara, Martin, and Charles D. Wright [app.], “The (fifteen) signs before Doomsday in Irish tradition”, in: Papieski Wydział Teologiczny w Warszawie (ed.), Miscellanea Patristica Reverendissimo Marco Starowieyski septuagenario professori illustrissimo viro amplissimo ac doctissimo oblata, 20.2, Warsaw: Papieski Wydział Teologiczny w Warszawie, 2007. 223–254.
Banham, Debby, Martha Bayless, Alicia Corrêa, Julia Crick, Mary Garrison, Joan Hart-Hasler, Peter Jackson, Michael Lapidge, Vivien Law, Rosalind Love, Richard Marsden, Andy Orchard, Charles D. Wright, and Neil Wright, “Text and translation; Commentary”, in: Martha Bayless, and Michael Lapidge (eds), Collectanea Pseudo-Bedae, 14, Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1998. 121–197; 199–286.
From the preface (p. vii): “The present edition of the Collectanea pseudo-Bedae is essentially the production of a research seminar in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic (University of Cambridge) which met, under the direction of Michael Lapidge [...] As a result, the present text and translation are the corporate responsibility of the members of the seminar; in the individual Commentary, by contrast, individual contributions are signed.”
From the preface (p. vii): “The present edition of the Collectanea pseudo-Bedae is essentially the production of a research seminar in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic (University of Cambridge) which met, under the direction of Michael Lapidge [...] As a result, the present text and translation are the corporate responsibility of the members of the seminar; in the individual Commentary, by contrast, individual contributions are signed.”
External links
The author's website, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
