Exploring the 'Continuity of English Prose' and Variant Manuscript Evidence Studies: with particular reference to Wulfstan manuscripts

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The question of 'the continuity of English prose' is one that still needs to be investigated, The paucity of English literary texts during the transition period has often made historical linguists think of the investigation of the 'continuity' question as something next to impossible. But the call of 'Back to the manuscripts' remind s us of the continuity in transmission and dissemination of Old English texts represented by versions of Elfric and Wulfstan texts even after 1066. Variant texts produced by the process represent scribal responses which might certainly provide insights revealing the linguistic situation and change in the transition period. These could yield a clue to the examination of the 'continuity' problem (see Kubouchi (1998), Kubouchi (1999) and Kubouchi (March 2000) below).There is no need to emphasise the usefulness of electronic texts, particularly when offered on a diplomatic basis. A single diplomatic transcription is useful enough, but in the case of works which are preserved to us in more than one manuscript it is self-evident that individual manuscript texts, arranged in parallel text format line by line acquire more value than they have individually. It is hoped that Kubouchi (1999) and Kubouchi (February 2000), which is a product of the present 2-year research project and a trial revised version of Bethurum (1957), will draw attention to the usefulness of an electronic corpus of diplomatic parallel manuscript texts as a tool for historical studies of Early English, as well as to the relevance of manuscript evidence studies to syntactic and stylistic studies of linguistic changes in Old and Middle English. The final version of our Wulfstan texts will contain in computer-readable text-file form all the manuscript texts relevant to Wulfstan studies.