Shades of Anonymity: Characterizing Authorial Voice(s) in Anonymous Texts

FAIN: FT-55156-07

Jean Blacker
Kenyon College (Gambier, OH 43022-5020)

Based on a case study of variations in authorial voice in hybrid manuscripts containing portions of Wace's 12th-century CONCEPTION NOSTRE DAME, the project will offer a template to distinguish anonymous texts along a continuum with "purely" anonymous texts at one end, followed by texts with numerous anonymous lines interlarded into a recognizable author's text, abridgements, texts with larger, more distinct interpolations easily separated from the main narrative line of an author's work, to "pure" authors' texts at the other. The template will delineate a wide range of anonymous authorship of medieval vernacular texts and, by addressing more universal issues of author function, suggest as well approaches to authorial voice in later periods.