The function of 'things said' in Bede's 'Historia Ecclesiastica' and its Anglo-Norman re-writings

This dissertation is a study of the rhetorical use of oral expressive terms in Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica and the twelfth-century Anglo-Norman authors who sought to write as Bede wrote, producing grand, encompassing histories of England and its Church in Latin. In the past, historians and philologists have, in general, either embraced such terms as sure markers which point towards a reliance upon a bona-fide oral tradition, or have dismissed them as little more than unconscious literary practice devoid of any real significance.;Such terms can function in both of these ways, but they very often possess a different, quite specific rhetorical character. Moreover, this dissertation proves that these "oral-expressive" terms, such as dicitur or narrabat, do not invariably refer to oral tradition, but rather to what an author "said" (or wrote) in his text. And so I called these words and phrases oral indicatives, because they were just that: merely indicative of orality.;In Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica, the vast majority of oral indicatives are recurring oral indicatives, which is to say that they are employed on a very regular basis and that Bede's vocabulary encompassing such terms is both exceptionally limited and unusually precise. What is evident is the fact that Bede almost invariably employed certain words and phrases expressive of orality in cases where miracles were involved, and quite another set of oral-expressive terms when turning to mundane, quotidian subject matter. What this points to is a form of semiosis, a process of verbal signification which separates divine occrurences from everyday political and military events.;The question left, then, was to what extent this form of demarcation persisted in the works of authors writing in the twelfth century, a more fluid time in which marvels were as prevalent as miracles. The final chapters of this study are devoted to exploring the degree to which Bede's long shadow---not only in terms of content, but in terms of vocabulary, rhetoric and methodology---extended over the works of Anglo-Norman historiography.