The Parsed Corpus of
Middle English Poetry (PCMEP)
PCMEP Text Information
The Life of Saint Marina
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About the text:
About the edition and manuscript base:
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| Text name: | The Life of Saint Marina |
| Alternative names: | Saint Marina; Harkeneth hitherward beth still |
| Content: | Marina is cross-dressed as a man by her father and raised as a monk in a monastery. She is accused of rape by a woman who was made pregnant by a passing knight. Proving her piety, Marina accepts her punishment without any objection and is banished from the monastery. Marina eventually dies. At her death, Marina’s true gender is revealed and her fellow brethren realize that they punished her unjustly. Marina's accuser goes mad but her sanity is later restored by Marina's grace. The Life of Saint Marina is a curious mix of a saint's life in the hagiographic tradition and elements of profane comedy. |
| Genre/subjects: | saint's legend, saint's life, religious tale, monk's tale, pseudo-saint's life, secular-religious blend, religious comedy |
| Dialect of original composition: | Unknown The probable dialect of the original has not been discussed in considerable detail. Bödekker (1878: 256) classifies the dialect as "purely Southern [translated from German original]." However, it is neither clear which dialect region this is supposed to refer to nor whether the dialect attribution holds for the original or the manuscript witness. |
| Date of original composition: | 1300-1340 The mid-fourteenth century manuscript date functions as the terminus ante quem for the composition of the poem. As with most of Middle English poetry, the manuscript witness is unlikely to be the first recording of the text. In fact, Bödekker's (1878: 256) asserts that the introductory lines 1-4 and the final lines 227-232 are later additions to the original. Hence, it is very probable that the original is somewhat older than the manuscript. At the same time, there seems to be no reason to claim that the text was written considerably earlier than its manuscript witness. The language seems to accord well with the first half of the fourteenth century. Perhaps the poem may have been composed as early as, or maybe even earlier than, 1300. Hard evidence for a terminus post quem is lacking. |
| Suggested date: | 1320 |
| PCMEP period: | 2b (1300-1350) |
| Versification: | couplets, two-line, aa |
| Index of ME Verse: | 1104 (IMEV), 1104 (NIMEV) |
| Digital Index of ME Verse: | 1785 |
| Wells: | 5.53 |
| MEC HyperBibliography: | St.Marina |
About the edition and manuscript base:
| Edition: | Bödekker, Karl. 1878. Altenglische Dichtungen des Ms. Harl. 2253: Mit Grammatik und Glossar. Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung. 256-63. |
| Manuscript used for edition: | London, British Library, Harley 2253, f. 64v - 65v |
| Online manuscript description: | Manuscripts of the West Midlands (item 35) Manuscript Description, British Library Digitzed Manuscript f. 64v, British Library eLALME |
| Manuscript dialect: | West-Midlands The scribe of the relevant part of the manuscript has been identified as a professional scribe working in Ludlow, in Southern Shropshire (Revard 1970). The manuscript is also linked to the West-Midlands in other ways. The binding incorporates fragments of financial accounts of a West-Midlands family called Mortimer, who had their main seat at Wigmore Castle in Herefordshire. Further, it also includes extracts from the ordinal of Herefordshire Cathedral (Ker 1965: xxii). |
| Manuscript date: | s. xiv-in, s. xiv-med The relevant section of the manuscript has been dated to the 1330s - 1340s (Ker 1965, Revard 1970). The manuscript was originally believed to have been copied around 1310 (Wells 1916: 314) based on references to the death of Edward I (1307) (Wright & Halliwell-Phillipps 1845: 261), then around 1320 because of references to the Battle of Bannockburn (1314). The MED used to list the manuscript date as "c1325." However, the scholarly consensus is now that it cannot date from before 1340 since the latest political poem mentions Edward III who left for the Hundred Years War in 1338 (Stemmler 1962). The online version of the MED re-dated the manuscript from "c1325" to "a1350" in November 2017. |
About the file:
| File name: | M2b.StMarina |
| ID: | StMarina,x.y.z: x=page, y=line, z=token |
| Word count: | 1,384 |
| Token count: | 154 |
| Line count: | 233 |
Other:
| General notes: | There exists a second Middle English poem about St. Marina found, for instance, in the Vernon manuscript. It was redacted independently from the text discussed here (Bödekker 1878: 255-6). |
| Remarks on parses: | The line breaks follow Bödekker's (1878: 256-63) edition. The parses are generally unproblematic. |
References
Bödekker, Karl. 1878. Altenglische Dichtungen des Ms. Harl. 2253: Mit Grammatik und Glossar. Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung. (available online)
Ker, Neil R. 1965. Facsimile of British Museum MS. Harley 2253. EETS o.s. 255. London: Oxford University Press.
Revard, Carter. 1970. 'Richard Hurd and MS Harley 2253.' Notes and Queries 224. 199-202.
Stemmler, Theo. 1962. 'Zur Datierung des MS. Harley 2253.' Anglia 80. 111-118.
Wells, John E. 1916. Manual of the Writings in Middle English, 1050-1400. New Haven, CT: Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences. (available online)
Wright, Thomas & Halliwell-Phillipps, James O. 1845. Reliquiae Antiquae. Volume 1. London: Smith. (available online)