The Parsed Corpus of
Middle English Poetry (PCMEP)
PCMEP Text Information
Joseph and Jacob
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About the text:
About the edition and manuscript base:
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| Text name: | Joseph and Jacob |
| Alternative names: | Will ye now I-hear words swith good; Iosep and Iacob; The Story of Joseph |
| Content: | The poem Joseph and Jacob narrates the Old Testament (Genesis) story of Joseph and Jacob. Joseph, Jacob's favourite son, is sold into captivity to Egypt by his jealous brothers. Joseph wins the Pharaoh's favour by interpreting dreams. When famine comes, he brings his father and brothers into safety to Egypt. His brothers do not recognize him, but eventually Joseph reveals his true identity and the family is reunited. The story is full of action and direct speech. There is no obvious theological or didactic intent. |
| Genre/subjects: | scripture paraphrase, ballad |
| Dialect of original composition: | Unknown, perhaps Southern The dialect of the original has not been discussed sufficiently enough for a confident localization. According to Napier, the original poem may have been composed in the South: "The verbal endings prove its Southern origin; the pres. indic, pl. in -eþ (-þ); retention of the i in hatie [...]; the ending of the pres.partic. in -inde. The initial v for f in vader [...] also shows that it was written in the South" (Napier 1916: xxx). |
| Date of original composition: | 1260-1290 "The composition of the poem may be assigned to the same period [as the mid-to-late thirteenth century manuscript]" (Napier 1916: xxix-xxx). "Napier has dated [...] the poem soon after 1250" (Wels 1918: 978). |
| Suggested date: | 1265 |
| PCMEP period: | 2a (1250-1300) |
| Versification: | couplets, aa verses with seven, sometimes six, stresses; some alliteration (Wells 1916: 398) |
| Index of ME Verse: | 4172 (IMEV), 4172 (NIMEV) |
| Digital Index of ME Verse: | 6688 |
| Wells: | 8.2 |
| MEC HyperBibliography: | Jacob & J. |
About the edition and manuscript base:
| Edition: | Napier, Arthur. 1916. Iacob and Iosep: A Middle English Poem of the Thirteenth Century. Oxford: Clarendon. 1-18. |
| Manuscript used for edition: | Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 652 (SC 2306) ff. 1r-10v |
| Online manuscript description: | LAEME Manuscripts of the West Midlands (item 1) Summary catalogue of Western manuscripts in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, no. 2306 |
| Manuscript dialect: | West-Midlands The manuscript language has been localized to Gloucestershire (McIntosh et al. 1986: 146). "The [manuscript] dialect is that of the South-west" (Napier 1916: xxx). |
| Manuscript date: | s. xiii-mid, s. xiii-ex "The MS. seems to have been written soon after the middle of the thirteenth century; it cannot be earlier, as the spellings o for OE. u and ou for OE. ū show" (Napier 1916: xxix). Wells (1916: 398) claimed that the manuscript belongs to the "beginning 15th century." Wells (1918: 978) corrects that misconception by citing Napier, who "has dated MS. Bodley 652 [...] soon after 1250." The online version of the Middle English Dictionary lists the manuscript date as ?a1300. |
About the file:
| File name: | M2a.IoseIaco |
| ID: | IoseIaco,x.y.z: x=page number, y=line, z=token |
| Word count: | 4,605 |
| Token count: | 481 |
| Line count: | 583 |
Other:
| General notes: | Joseph and Jacob is only extant in one manuscript, Bodley 652. The rest of the manuscript is in French and Latin. "The piece may have been composed to be recited at lodging places by a travelling minstrel clerk (see last couplet)" (Wells 1916: 398). |
| Remarks on parses: | The line breaks follow the rhyming scheme as in Napier's (1916: 1-18) edition. The Latin explicit Explicit Iacob & Iosep is not included in the parsed file. Napier's edition includes inverted commas to introduce direct speech. These inverted commas are not included in the parsed file. Instead, direct speech is indicated solely with the extension -SPE. The parses are largely unproblematic. |
References
McIntosh, Angus, Samuels, Michael L. & Benskin, Michael. 1986. A Linguistic Atlas of Late Medieval English. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press.
Napier, Arthur, S.. 1916. Iacob and Iosep: A Middle English Poem of the Thirteenth Century. Oxford: Clarendon. (available online)
Wells, John E. 1916. Manual of the Writings in Middle English, 1050-1400. New Haven, CT: Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences. (available online)
Wells, John E. 1918. First Supplement to a Manual of the Writings in Middle English 1050-1400. Additions and Modifications to September 1918. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. (available online)