A Debate of the Body and the Soul in Old Norse Literature

Genesis and Provenance of the Oldest Soul-and-Body Debate in Old Norse Tradition

“…Síðar kann handritið að hafa borist frá Flanders (Flaemingjalandi) til systurklausturs benediktína í Noregi -eins og Munkeliv í Björgvin -enda vel þekkt og staðfest að ábatasamt tengslanet verslunar og klausturmenningar var á milli skrifarastofa í klaustrum í Flanders og Noregi á tímabilinu frá tólftu til fjórtándu aldar.Genesis and Provenance of the Oldest Soul-and-Body Debate in Old Norse TraditionKeywords: Soul-and-body debates, Old Norwegian Homily Book, Reynistaðarbók, Flanders, Anglo-Norman literature, Benedictine scriptoria, Un Samedi par nuit, Old Norse Philology This article traces the manuscript filiation and the routes of textual transmission of Viðrǿða líkams ok sálar, the first soul-and-body debate that is preserved in Old Norse translation, a fairly faithful yet succinct translation of the Anglo-Norman poem known alternatively as Desputisun de l'âme et du corps and Un Samedi par nuit.The Norse text survives today in four manuscripts: AM 619 4to (Old Norwegian Homily Book), AM 696 XXXII 4to, AM 764 4to, and JS 405 8vo. Through a qualitative analysis of concurrent readings, the present study confirms and expands the stemma hypothesized by OleWidding and Hans Bekker-Nielsen in 1959. The presence in the Norse text of readings typical of a newly identified "Continental tradition" within the Anglo-Norman family of manuscripts indicates that the nowlost manuscript source may have been a French codex, produced in all probability in a Flemish Benedictine monastery (Picardy, northeastern Artois or Hainaut)…”