Review article
Editing early wordlists The Werden A Glossary: Edition and Commentary. By A. N. Doane (Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis: Lexica Latina Medii Aevi, viii).
Turnhout: Brepols, 2025. 317 pp. ISBN 978-2-503-61248-5 € 185.00

John Considine
University of Alberta
Publication history

Date received: 8 October 2026

Date accepted: 12 October 2026

Table of contents

A great many dictionaries and wordlists — “glossaries”, as medievalists call them, although this word is used in a more restricted sense in later periods — survive from medieval Europe, and many of them remain unedited. Good editions of primary texts are to be desired in every historical field, but the need for good editions of wordlists is particularly pressing. In early lexicography, the relationships between primary witnesses are complex: where does one lexicographical tradition end, and another, derived from it or akin to it, begin? The story of intertextual relationships which links a wordlist with its non-lexicographical sources is, likewise, often exceedingly intricate. Moreover, the texts of the wordlists, rich in the decontextualized rare words which tend to lead copyists astray, are often very faulty. These are all problems which require editorial work to resolve them. So, readers of early dictionaries owe a particular debt to the editors of the primary sources which they use, particularly when the results of their work are as good as A. N. Doane’s excellent edition of the so-called “Werden A” wordlist.

References

Bergmann, Rolf
2009 “Methodische Probleme der Dialektbestimmungen”. Die althochdeutsche und altsächsische Glossographie: Ein Handbuch ed. by Rolf Bergmann and Stefanie Stricker, 1192–1202. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bethmann, Ludwig Konrad
1845 “Alte Glossen”. Zeitschrift für deutsches Alterthum 5.193–211.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bischoff, Bernhard
1952 “Review of Richard Drögereit, Werden und der Heliand (1951)”. Anzeiger für deutsches Altertum 66:1.7–12 [issued with Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum 84:1].Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bischoff, Bernhard, Mildred Budny, Geoffrey Harlow, M. B. Parkes, and J. D. Pheifer
eds. 1988 The Épinal, Erfurt, Werden, and Corpus Glossaries (= Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile, 22). Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bremmer, Rolf H. Jr., and Kees Dekker
2023 “The Leiden Glossary.” In Seiler et al., Medieval Glossaries from North-Western Europe, 210–216.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cataldi, Claudio
ed. 2023 The Bodley Glossaries: The Glossaries in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 730. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Considine, John
ed. 2019 The Cambridge World History of Lexicography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2024 “Dictionaries in Book History”. The Cambridge Handbook of the Dictionary ed. by Edward Finegan and Michael Adams, 238–252. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Crépin, André. Review of Pheifer
1974 Études Anglaises, 29(1).79.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dionisotti, A. C.
ed. 2022 Expositio notarum (= Cambridge Classical Texts and Commentaries, 64). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1996 ‘On the Nature and Transmission of Latin Glossaries”. Les manuscrits des lexiques et glossaires de l’antiquité tardive à la fin du moyen âge ed. by Jacqueline Hamesse (= Textes et études du moyen âge, 4), 205–252. Louvain-la-neuve: Fédération internationale des instituts d’études médiévales. Reprinted in Franzen 2012b: 13–60. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Doane, A. N.
1994 “The Ethnography of Scribal Writing and Anglo-Saxon Poetry: Scribe as Performer”. Oral Tradition, 9.2: 420–439.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2006 “The Werden Glossary: Structure and Sources”. Beatus Vir: Studies in Early English and Norse Manuscripts in Memory of Phillip Pulsiano (= Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 319) ed. by A. N. Doane and Kirsten Wolf, 41–84. Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Reprinted in Franzen 2012b: 121–164.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Franzen, Christine
2012a “Introduction”. In Franzen 2012b, xv–lxxxvi. Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
ed. 2012b Ashgate Critical Essays on Early English Lexicographers, vol. I: Old English. Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gallée, J. H.
ed. 1894 Altsaechsische Sprachdenkmaeler. Leiden: E. J. Brill. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
ed. 1895 Altsaechsische Sprachdenkmaeler: Facsimile Sammlung. Leiden: E. J. Brill.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Glogger, Plazidus
ed. 1901 Das Leidener Glossar Cod. Voss. lat. 4o 69, part 1: Text der Handschrift [no more published]. Augsburg: Ph. J. Pfeiffer.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goetz, Georg
1888–1923 Corpus glossariorum Latinorum. 7 vols. Leipzig: in aedibus B. G. Teubneri.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Grondeux, Anne, Franck Cinato, et al.
eds. 2016 Liber glossarum digital. http://​liber​-glossarum​.huma​-num​.fr
Herren, Michael W., et al.
eds. In progress The Épinal–Erfurt Glossary https://​epinal​-erfurt​.artsci​.utoronto​.ca​/index​.php​/new​-revised​-edition/
Jones, John, of Gellilyfdy
2023 Geirfâu’r Fflyd 1632–1633 ed. by Ann Parry Owen. Cardiff: Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kennett, White
2018 Etymological Collections of English Words and Provincial Expressions ed. by Javier Ruano-García. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ker, N. R.
1957 Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kishimoto Emi
2023 “Stairway to the stars: Jesuit training and the Dictionarium Latino Lusitanicum, ac Iaponicum (1595)”. Mastering Languages, Taming the World: The Production and Circulation of European Dictionaries and Lexicons of Asian Languages (16th–19th Centuries) ed. by Michaela Bussotti and François Lachaud, 61–76. Paris: École française d’Extrême-Orient.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Landau, Sidney I.
2001 Dictionaries: The Art and Craft of Lexicography. 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lapidge, Michael
ed. 2023 Canterbury Glosses from the School of Theodore and Hadrian: The Leiden Glossary (= Publications of the Journal of Medieval Latin, 17/1–2). Turnhout: Brepols. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lendinara, Patrizia
2019 “Minimal Collections of Glosses: The Twelve Rooms of Thomas’ Palace”. Anglo-Saxon Micro-Texts ed. by Ursula Lenker and Lucia Kornexl (= Buchreihe der Anglia / Anglia Book Series, 67), 175–201. Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McCarren, Vincent P.
1990 “Review of Bischoff et al. 1988”. Speculum, 65.941–944. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Muller, Jean-Claude, Wolf Dietrich, Ruth Monserrat, Cândida Barros, Karl-Heinz Arenz, and Gabriel Prudente
eds. 2019 Dicionário de língua geral Amazônica. Potsdam: Universitätsverlag Potsdam.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Olszowy-Schlanger, Judith, with Anne Grondeux, et al.
eds. 2008 Dictionnaire Hébreu–latin–français de la Bible hébraïque de l’abbaye de Ramsey (xiii e s.) (= Lexica latina medii aevi, 4). Turnhout: Brepols.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pheifer, J. D.
ed. 1974 Old English Glosses in the Épinal–Erfurt Glossary. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Porter, David W.
The Épinal–Erfurt Glossary”. In Seiler et al., Medieval Glossaries from North-Western Europe, 217–226.
Roberts, Michael
1989 The Jeweled Style: Poetry and Poetics in Late Antiquity. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sauer, Hans
2023 “Old English Glossaries”. In Seiler et al., Medieval Glossaries from North-Western Europe, 195–209.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Seiler, Anina, Chiara Benati, and Sara M. Pons-Sanz
eds. 2023 Medieval Glossaries from North-Western Europe: Tradition and Innovation. Turnhout: Brepols. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Steinmeyer, Elias von
1889 “Lateinische und altenglische Glossen.” Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 33: 242–251.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sweet, Henry
ed. 1885 The Oldest English Texts. London: Trübner, for the Early English Text Society.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vaciago, Paolo
2023 “Insular–Continental Connections.” In Seiler et al., Medieval Glossaries from North-Western Europe, 435–448.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar

Address for correspondence

John Considine

University of Alberta

East Rackenthwaite

Garsdale Sedbergh LA10 5PD

United Kingdom

[email protected]
 
Authentication
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 jbe-platform.quadraat-sans-bold jbe-platform.quadraat-sans-bold-dark jbe-platform.quadraat-sans-bold-light jbe-platform.quadraat-sans-bold prag Twitter_Logo_Blue