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Part of
Keys to the History of English: Diachronic linguistic change, morpho-syntax and lexicography
Edited by Thijs Porck, Moragh S. Gordon and Luisella Caon
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 363] 2024
► pp. 166–190

Early modern manuscripts containing Old English dictionaries in England and northern Germany

From John Joscelyn to Dietrich von Stade

| University of Göttingen
This paper retraces the early modern beginnings of systematic Old English studies in England and continental Europe. It shows that linguistic study was born out of research interests in the fields of theology, law, and local history to name but a few; and that scholars needed dictionaries as tools to understand this archaic form of English. In the 16th century, John Joscelyn and John Parker created a substantial dictionary of Old English, of which several Northern German copies exist today. This paper explores the production processes of Joscelyn/Parker’s dictionary as well as the Northern German copies, as can be gleaned from the similarities and, more importantly, the differences in layout, entry-count and -content, and marginal markings in the manuscripts.
Keywords: Early Modern Europe, antiquarianism, Beginning of Old English Studies, Old English-Latin dictionaries, John Joscelyn / John Parker, Friedrich Lindenbrog, Abraham Hinckelmann, Johann Georg von Eckhart, Dietrich von Stade, peritextual markings
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Changing research interests from the 16th to the 18th centuries
  • 3.Creating a dictionary of Old English in the early modern period: The production of J/P 15 and J/P 16
  • 4.Lindenbrog’s treatment of the contents of J/P 15 and J/P 16
  • 5.The northern German copies: Similarities and differences
  • 6.Markings in the manuscript dictionaries
    • 6.1Re-ordering markers
    • 6.2Combination and separation markers
    • 6.3Marginal ‘x’
    • 6.4Underlining
    • 6.5Asterisk
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 4 April 2024
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.363.08vol
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