Many Old English students will count Alfred’s prefatory letter to the Old English Pastoral Care among the texts that introduced them to the language; outside of Beowulf, Alfred’s stated aim to translate “suma bec—ða ðe niedbeðearfosta sien eallum monnum to wiotonne” [certain books—those most essential for all people to know] is perhaps one of the most quoted lines in the corpus of early English writing. Despite the apparent centrality of the Pastoral Care to early English translational practice, education, ethics, and philosophy, the text itself has only been lightly edited: the only full edition of the Pastoral Care available has been Henry Sweet’s for the Early English Text Society in 1871.
Fulk’s edition is based on Sweet’s, taking Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Hatton 20 as its base with occasional corrections and collations with other manuscripts; these corrections are derived in part from work by Neil Ker and Suksan Kim. The translation itself appears in facing-page format—welcome to anyone who has worked with Sweet’s Hatton-Cotton edition (with translation at the bottom). Likewise, those who have plodded through Sweet’s aggressively archaic prose may welcome Fulk’s translation. In his introduction, Fulk states that “To convey the gravity of [the Pastoral Care’s] ethical dictates, the translation aims for a somewhat elevated register, though not one that is oppressively archaic” (xi). His efforts have produced a translation that is generally readable, allowing the Old English the learnedness and flexibility that it strove to emulate in its Latin source. Additionally, Fulk discusses the polysemic nature of the Old English vocabulary and the challenges it presents for modern translators in producing modern English texts sensitive to the range of meanings held as potential within any given word.
Hilary Fox
Speculum
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