Asser's Life of King Alfred: Translated From the Text of Stevenson's Edition (English Edition) [Kindle-editie] beoordelingen het boek quotes

PREFACEThe issue of Stevenson's long and eagerly expected edition of Asser's Life of King Alfred has provided an opportunity to supply the ever increasing number of the great king's admirers with a more satisfactory rendering into English of this, perhaps the most precious document, notwithstanding all its faults, for the comprehension of his life and character.The authenticity of the Life was impugned by Thomas Wright in 1841, by Sir Henry Howorth in 1876-77, and by an unknown writer in 1898, and it had become somewhat the fashion to regard it as a production of a later period, and therefore entitled to but little credence. The doubts as to its authenticity have been satisfactorily dispelled by the two eminent scholars who have most recently discussed the difficulties, Plummer and Stevenson.The former, in his Life and Times of Alfred the Great, Oxford, 1902, says (p. 52): ' The work which bears Asser's name cannot be later than 974, and the attempt to treat it as a forgery of the eleventh or twelfth century must be regarded as having broken down. I may add that I started with a strong prejudice against the authenticity of Asser, so that my conclusions have at any rate been impartially arrived at.' The latter, in his noble edition (Oxford, 1904), remarks (p. vii) : ' In discussing the work I have attempted to approach it without any bias for or against it, and throughout my endeavor has been to subject every portion of it to as searching an examination asmy knowledge and critical powers would permit. The net result has been to convince me that, although there may be no very definite proof that the work was written by Bishop Asser in the lifetime of King Alfred, there is no anachronism or other proof that it is a spurious compilation of later date. The serious charges brought against its authenticity break down altogether under examination, while there remain several features that point with varying strength to the conclusion that it is, despite its difficulties and corruptions, really a work of the time it purports to be. This result is confirmed by the important corroboration of some of its statements by contemporary Frankish chroniclers. Thus the profession of belief in its authenticity by such eminent historians as Kemble, Pauli, Stubbs, and Freeman agrees with my own conclusion.'Notwithstanding their general rehabilitation of the work, however, neither critic is prepared to trust it implicitly. Plummer says (p. 62) : ' On the whole, then, Asser is an authority to be used with criticism and caution ; partly because we have always to be alive to the possibility of interpolation, partly because the writer's Celtic imagination is apt to run away with him.' And thus Stevenson (p. cxxx): ' The work still presents some difficulties. Carelessness of transcription may possibly explain those that are merely verbal, but there still remain certain passages that lay the author open to the charge of exaggeration, such as his mention of gold-covered and silver-covered buildings, if that be the literal meaning of the passage, and his statement that Alfred might, if he had chosen, have been king before his elder brother ^thelred, with whom, it is clear, he was on most intimate terms.'The style of the book is not uniform. The passages translated from the Chronicle are simpler, while in the more original parts the author displays an unfortunate tendency to a turgid and at times bombastic manner ofwriting. Indeed, it displays, in many passages, the traits of that Hesperic Latinity which, invented or made fashionable in the sixth century, probably by a British monk in the southwestern part of England, was more or less current in England from the time of Aldhelm until the Norman Conquest. This Hesperic, or Celtic, Latinity has been compared to the mock euphuism of Sir Piercie Shafton in Scott's Monastery (Professor H. A. Strong, in Amencan Journal of Philology 26. 205), and may be illustrated by Professor Strong's translation