What the Thunder Said: Anglo-Saxon Brontologies and the Problem of Sources

Abstract

The analysis of sources is one of the most important and difficult activities in Anglo-Saxon studies. The present article considers source study in its genealogical aspect—as a practice of placing texts in a vertical relationship of source and target—and suggests that this model, though often fruitful, may not always reflect the full range of possible relationships between Latin and vernacular texts in Anglo-Saxon England. The article uses one particular set of texts, Anglo-Saxon prognostics for thunder, as a case study for discussing some of the problems of determining relationships of similarity and difference between texts; it reviews old evidence and presents new evidence for the sources of these texts, while at the same time using them as a paradigm for how other theoretical approaches to the source–target relationship, such as orality and discourse theory, can help illuminate not only the historical origins of such texts but also their use in a monastic context, and by extension the relationship between texts, learning, and languages in Anglo-Saxon England.

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