Logo: to the web site of Uppsala University

uu.sePublications from Uppsala University
Change search
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf
The Revelations of St Birgitta: A Study and Edition of the Birgittine-Norwegian Texts, Swedish National Archives, E 8902
Uppsala University, Disciplinary Domain of Humanities and Social Sciences, Faculty of Languages, Department of Scandinavian Languages.ORCID iD: 0000-0003-3890-4630
2015 (English)Book (Refereed)
Abstract [en]

In The Revelations of St Birgitta: A Study and Edition of the Birgittine-Norwegian Texts, Swedish National Archives, E 8902, Jonathan Adams offers a detailed analysis of the manuscript and its contents as well as a new edition of this puzzling text. The Birgittine-Norwegian texts are very distinctive from the main Birgittine vernacular corpus of literature and have taxed scholars for decades as to why and for whom they were written.

The linguistic study of the manuscript is combined with contextual and historical information in order to reinforce the arguments made and offer explanations within a cultural context. This provides a welcome new dimension to earlier research that has otherwise been pursued to a large degree within a single academic discipline.

 

CONTENTS

 

Table of contents

List of Figures

List of Tables

Acknowledgements

List of Abbreviations

 

I Background

 

1 St Birgitta and her Revelations

1.1 Why St Birgitta?

1.2 The life of St Birgitta

1.3 The Revelations of St Birgitta (Latin tradition)

1.4 The Revelations of St Birgitta (Swedish tradition)

1.5 This book

 

2 Textual history of the vernacular Scandinavian manuscripts

2.1 Extant Swedish manuscripts

2.1.1 Swedish retranslation

2.2 Other Scandinavian manuscripts

2.2.1 Old Danish

2.2.2 Middle Norwegian

2.3 Summary

 

3 Birgitta and Norway

3.1 Towards Nordic union in the fourteenth century: Royalty and the nobility

3.2 Birgitta’s own personal contacts with Norway

3.3 Birgitta’s family connections with Norway

3.4 The Birgittine Movement in Norway and Munkeliv

3.5 Summary

 

4 Summary of previous research into the manuscript

4.1 Gustaf E. Klemming

4.2 Robert Geete

4.3 Knut B. Westman

4.4 Vilhelm Gödel

4.5 Salomon Kraft

4.6 Marius Sandvei

4.7 Didrik Arup Seip

4.8 Elias Gustaf Adolf Wessén

4.9 Lars Wollin

4. 10 Lennart Moberg

4.11 Hans Torben Gilkær

4.12 General evaluation of earlier theories

 

II Manuscript

 

5 Manuscript description

5.1 Date and origin

5.2 Provenance

5.3 Contents

5.4 Make-up and description

5.4.1 Foliation

5.4.2 Materials and dimensions

5.4.3 Quiring

5.4.4 Ruling and pricking

5.4.5 Catchwords

5.5 Script

5.5.1 Scribal characteristics

5.5.2 Abbreviations

5.5.3 Punctuation

5.5.4 Hyphenation and Word Division

5.5.5 Spacing

5.5.6 Rubrics and Guide Letters

5.5.7 Marginal Notes

5.6 Binding

5.7 Damage

5.8 Scribal error

 

III Language

 

6 Lexicon: idiosyncracies, foreign influence, and dialectal forms

6.1 Hapax Legomena

6.1.1 *drøvuker

6.1.2 *iakilse and *iatilse

6.1.3 *nidherflytilse

6.1.4 *solbadh

6.1.5 *spailse

6.1.6 *søkiarinna

6.1.7 *unsæld

6.1.8 *urfamse/orfamse

6.1.9 Distribution

6.1.10 Discussion

6.2 Middle Low German loanwords

6.2.1 Unbound Morphemes

6.2.2 Bound Morphemes

6.2.3 Summary

6.3 Latin words and phrases in E 8902

6.3.1 Adjectives and Common Nouns

6.3.2 Proper Nouns

6.4 Vadstenaspråk-like, Östgötska, and Danish features

 

7 Language mixture in medieval Scandinavian manuscripts

7.1 Causes of Swedish influence on Norwegian in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries

7.1.1 Early definitions

7.1.2 The problem of defining “norm” in the context of Old Norwegian 

7.1.3 Internal causes of mixture

7.1.4 External causes of mixture

7.1.5 A diglossic situation in late medieval Norway?

7.2. Intentional types of language mixture in medieval Scandinavian manuscripts

7.2.1 Terminology

7.2.2 Summary

7.3 Causes of unintentional language mixture (“interference”) in medieval Scandinavian manuscripts

7.3.1 Scribe’s own idiolect

7.3.2 Scribe’s own dialect

7.3.3 Dialect of the original

7.3.4 Dialect of the area

7.3.5 Norm of the genre

7.3.6 Norm of the scriptorium

7.3.7 Audience

7.3.8 Summary

7.4 Concluding remarks

 

8 Analysis of language mixture in E 8902

8.1 The use of statistics in literary research

8.2 The diagnostic test features for E 8902 

8.2.1 Diagnostic test feature A: Progressive i-mutation

8.2.2 Diagnostic test feature B: Itacism

8.2.3 Diagnostic test feature C: Diphthongisation

8.2.4 Diagnostic test feature D: Monophthongisation

8.2.5 Diagnostic test feature E: Vowel merger

8.2.6 Diagnostic test feature F: Elision

8.2.7 Diagnostic test feature G: Dental assimilation

8.2.8 Diagnostic test feature H: First person singular pronoun

8.2.9 Diagnostic test feature I: Relative particle

8.2.10 Diagnostic test feature J: Anglo-Saxon letter forms

8.3 Statistical procedure

8.3.1 Total number of occurrences and proportion

8.3.2 Rate of occurrence

8.3.3 Ellegård’s distinctiveness ratio

8.3.4 Testing for significance

8.3.5 Pearson’s product-moment correlation coefficient

8.3.6 Summary

8.4 Language mixture

8.4.1 Findings of the statistical analysis of language mixture

8.5 Miscellaneous south-eastern Norwegian Forms

8.5.1 The intrusive svarabhakti vowel

8.5.2 Metaphony

8.5.3 Metathesis of “vr”

8.6 Summary of hand mixture types

8.6.1 Hand 1

8.6.2 Hand 2

8.6.3 Hand 3

8.6.4 Hand 4

8.7 Summary of linguistic analysis

 

9 Conclusion

9.1 Summary of aims, methods, and findings

9.2 Writing E 8902 

9.2.1 Scribes

9.2.2 Language

9.2.3 Place of composition

9.2.4 The manuscript’s place in the Swedish tradition

9.3 Contents and audience

 

IV Edition

 

10 Text and commentary

10.1 Editorial procedure

10.2 Transcription

 

11 Commentary, references, and indexes

11.1 Commentary and references

11.2 Index of names and places in E 8902

 

Bibliography

Index

 

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2015. , p. 640
Series
Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions, ISSN 1573 4188 ; 194
Keywords [en]
St Birgitta, Old Swedish, Middle Norwegian, Birgittine-Norwegian, manuscript studies
National Category
Specific Languages Specific Literatures Religious Studies
Research subject
Scandinavian Languages
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-264873ISBN: 9789004304659 (print)OAI: oai:DiVA.org:uu-264873DiVA, id: diva2:861853
Available from: 2015-10-19 Created: 2015-10-19 Last updated: 2018-01-11Bibliographically approved

Open Access in DiVA

No full text in DiVA

Authority records

Adams, Jonathan

Search in DiVA

By author/editor
Adams, Jonathan
By organisation
Department of Scandinavian Languages
Specific LanguagesSpecific LiteraturesReligious Studies

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle Scholar

isbn
urn-nbn

Altmetric score

isbn
urn-nbn
Total: 4155 hits
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf