A Dictionary of the Anglo-Saxon Language in the Netherlands, 1829-1840
I wish to thank the DSNA for the Laurence Urdang-DSNA award for the summer of 2007. These monies helped to fund access to a large collection of correspondence in Dutch repositories and in Lambeth Palace Library and the purchase of digital copies of all the Dutch correspondence. In 1829 Joseph Bosworth accepted a British consular chaplaincy in Amsterdam; in 1832 he would take on a similar position in Rotterdam. During this period radical changes in philology and in theories of the origins and dispersion of languages were underway, particularly on the Continent. It was during this same period that Bosworth compiled and published in 1838 his seminal work,
A Dictionary of the Anglo-Saxon Language, which has stood for over 150 years as the only truly comprehensive lexical resource for scholars attempting to translate and explicate Old English texts.
Until recently I had little information on the vital decade Bosworth spent compiling this dictionary in the Netherlands; this was a significant gap in my study of this important dictionary. The correspondence (over 100 letters and documents) offered detailed compilation information and revealed much about Bosworth’s (and his dictionary’s) historical position in the Oxford Movement and in the so-called Anglo-Saxon Controversy, a nasty philological battle fought in the pages of
Gentleman’s Magazine during the same period. The letters clarified the effects these movements exerted on Bosworth’s lexical project and clerical position, the dictionary would emerge as a messy compromise among the competing interests represented by these twin quagmires, and Bosworth would find a new pastoral calling in the moral improvement of the English people through the recovery of Old English.
I spent some time last summer coming to terms with the complex forces that birthed the Oxford Movement, reading the writings of the Oxford Tractarians and documents (chiefly letters to
Gentleman’s Magazine) that comprise the Anglo-Saxon controversy, which pitted antiquarians, whose aim was to make Old English texts accessible in editions and translations, against the chiefly German and Danish New Philologists. These two movements dovetailed in Bosworth’s scholarship and in his clerical position as consular chaplain. His correspondence with Charles James Blomfield, Bishop of London, for example, reflects the struggle to harmonize Dutch and British liturgical practice in this fraught political environment. While Bosworth’s sympathies lay with the Church of England and generally with the Oxford Movement’s concerns, his position necessitated often difficult compromises. There are only hints that his increasing investment in antiquarian scholarship was motivated by such pressures, but the correspondence on scholarly projects is extensive and reveals a precocious intellectual enthusiasm not evident in his discussions of church affairs.
The correspondence clarifies the circumstances of his other publications during the period (treatises on the origins of the Danish, English, German, and Scandinavian Languages, a history of Scandinavian Literature, and Dutch translations of
The Book of Common Prayer and of the Psalms), and of his previously murky academic credentials: he was awarded an honorary D.Phil. from the University of Leiden in 1832, and spent two extensive periods in England completing a B.D. and D.D. at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1834 and 1839 respectively. The former (1834) places him in Cambridge at the height of the Anglo-Saxon controversy and the correspondence clarifies that he did not play a direct role as has been previously thought; indeed, he tried unsuccessfully to find a compromise among the positions. The dictionary was clearly an obsession. The number of philologists, scholars and theologians with whom he communicated is impressive; the deeply conflicting theological and philological positions they represent are startling—dissenters, scientists, new philologists, antiquarians, etc. The large number of letters between Bosworth and J.H. Halbertsma, the founding father of modern Frisian lexicography, establishes a more detailed compilation timetable than has previously been available (for example, the full manuscript was with the printer by the end of 1835, three years before publication); discloses his constant attempts to hurry his printer and his frequent trips to England to do so; includes three separate prospectuses written over the years of compilation (I had only known of one), which reveal his changing conception; details the “continental literati” who assisted with entries; shows that he originally thought the dictionary would run only 50-60 sheets; and verifies that he started almost immediately on a supplement by going through “all of Grimm’s works collecting new words and to insert those omitted as well.”
Finally, the correspondence proves that Bosworth felt a profound abhorrence for the ungentlemanly quarrels that characterized both the Oxford Movement and the Anglo-Saxon controversy. Overall it illuminates a conservative Anglican antiquarian also interested in the new philology, but first and foremost an editor and compiler who cajoled, flattered and coerced any and all with the talent and knowledge to assist in the dictionary’s compilation no matter their theological or philological ideologies. Bosworth harbored strong nationalistic and moral ambitions for the Old English language, and the dictionary was an essential instrument in realizing those ambitions. If he also recognized that the resulting product was an uncomfortable blend of antiquarian etymologies, German and Danish comparative philology, and tangled theological agendas this mattered less than getting it published. And when Bosworth returned to England after its publication, it was under a license of non-residence, which allowed him to live away from his parish for purposes of study. During the next 18 years, now financially secure, he ignored his Lincoln parish in order to ransack the Bodleian Library, to publish editions of Anglo-Saxon texts, to revise the dictionary, and ironically, in 1858 at the age of 60, to be elected to the Rawlinson Chair of Anglo-Saxon Studies at Oxford University.
In conclusion, access to this wealth of material filled in a major gap in my knowledge of this crucial decade in Bosworth’s life and career and I am deeply grateful to the DSNA for its support.
Dabney A. Bankert, DSNA-Laurence Urdang Award Winner for 2007
James Madison University
Labels: Administration, Award, DSNA award
