The Parsed Corpus of
Middle English Poetry (PCMEP)
PCMEP Text Information
Debate between Body and Soul
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| Text name: | Debate between Body and Soul |
| Alternative names: | Body and Soul (4); Dialogus; Dialogus inter Corpus et Animam; In a thestri |
| Content: | The poet stood in a dark place overhearing a debate between a soul and its deceased body (ll. 1-6). Then follow regular speech and counter speech between the soul and the body. For example, the soul reminds the body of its falseness to which the body replies that it thought the world's joys would last forever (ll. 1-24); the soul says that worldly goods are lost forever and the body that it expected to live forever (ll. 25-40), etc. The dialogue continues in this fashion (ll. 41-186). Finally, the poet remembers the soul going into hell and the body rotting in the ground. Jesus Christ, not worldly possessions, have the power to redeem us (ll. 187-249). |
| Genre/subjects: | death, debate, doom, memento mori theme |
| Dialect of original composition: | West Midlands There are "quite a lot of forms belonging to the West-Midland dialect, which makes it indubitable that we have in front of us a rendition of a Midlands original" [translated from the original German] (Bödekker 1978: 235). An example of such a form is the rhyme þi purpris : þou lis 'your worldly goods : you lie' (ll. 30, 32). It has also been pointed out that the body and soul theme itself seems to be associated with the West Midlands. "[A]ll the [body and soul] debates and the majority of the manuscripts have a connection to the Worcestershire and Welsh Border region" (Jean Richards 2009: 175). |
| Date of original composition: | 1200-1275 There is general consensus that The Debate between Body and Soul dates from the thirteenth century (e.g., Raskolnikov 2009: 72, Bödekker 1878: 234). Its oldest manuscript witness, Trinity College B.14.39, from before 1275, functions as the terminus ad quem for the composition of the original. On the whole, the language accords better with the second than the first half of the thirteenth century and the poem has consequently been grouped into PCMEP period 2a (1250-1300). |
| Suggested date: | 1255 |
| PCMEP period: | M2a (1250-1300) |
| Versification: | Bödekker (1878) versifies the poem into stanzas of eight short lines, forming rhyming couplets, abababab. "248 verses usually alternating four and three stresses, and usually abababab. The speeches are each of four lines, one line of which is sometimes narrative connective" (Wells 1916: 413). The a-rhymes are often imperfect or non-existent. For example, the first stanza has perfect couplets, stod : here : god : bere : mod : shere : blod : here (ll. 1-8), whereas a later stanza has imperfect couplets, brenne : stondes : quenche : wondes : ben : londes : sayen : sondes (ll. 113-120). This may suggest that the original poem had been composed in quatrains, aaaa. "[T]he original was composed in septenary quatrains that rhymed in an octave pattern: (a4b3)(a4b3)(a4b3)(a4b3)" (Fein 2014: Introduction to Art. 22). |
| Index of ME Verse: | 1839 (IMEV), 1839 (NIMEV) |
| Digital Index of ME Verse: | 2462 |
| Wells: | 9.1 |
| MEC HyperBibliography: | Body & S.(4) |
About the edition and manuscript base:
| Edition: | Bödekker, Karl. 1878. Altenglische Dichtungen des Ms. Harl. 2253: Mit Grammatik und Glossar. Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung. 235-243. |
| Manuscript used for edition: | London, British Library, Harley 2253, ff. 57r-58v |
| Online manuscript description: | British Library: Digitised Manuscripts Manuscripts of the West Midlands (item 22) 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: | M2a.DebBodySoul |
| ID: | DebBodySoul,x.y.z: x=page, y=line, z=token |
| Word count: | 1,197 |
| Token count: | 106 |
| Line count: | 249 248 + 1 final "Amen" Two lines can be thought of as combining into one long line. In this case, there would only be 124 lines (+ 1 final "Amen"). |
Other:
| General notes: | The poem Debate between Body and Soul is found in three manuscripts: Cambridge, Trinity College B.14.39 (323) (before 1275), Oxford, Bodleian Library, Digby 86 (before 1300), and London, British Library, Harley 2253 (before 1350). Despite the fact that Trinity B.14.39 is the oldest and preferred manuscript for the text, the parsed file is based on Harley 2253 because a modern edition for the former was not readily available. The body and soul theme was popular in the Middle Ages and several renditions survive from Middle English (for background, see e.g. Batiouchkof 1891, Raskolnikov 2009). Those are:
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| Remarks on parses: | The line breaks follow the rhyming scheme in Bödekker's (1878) edition. The parses are largely unproblematic. |
References
Batiouchkof, Théodor. 1891. 'Le débat de l’âme et du corps.' Romania 20, 1-55 (available online). 513-578. (available online)
Bödekker, Karl. 1878. Altenglische Dichtungen des Ms. Harl. 2253: Mit Grammatik und Glossar. Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung. (available online)
Fein, Susanna G. 2014. The Complete Harley 2253 Manuscript. Volume 2. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications. (available online)
Jean Richards, Emily. 2009. Body Soul Debates in English, French and German Manuscripts c. 1200-1500. PhD thesis University of York. (available online)
Ker, Neil R. 1965. Facsimile of British Museum MS. Harley 2253. EETS o.s. 255. London: Oxford University Press.
Raskolnikov, Marsha. 2009. Body Against Soul: Gender and Sowlehele in Middle English Allegory. Columbus: Ohio State 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)