The prologue to the old French Vie de St. Alexis : a linguistic study with considerations of its prosodic and conceptual features

This thesis represents a three-fold analysis of the prologue to the Old French Vie de St. Alexis as found in its principal manuscript, that of the St. Albans psalter, commonly denoted "L" manuscript. The purpose of the study was to investigate whether or not the illustrator and scribe of this document may be the author of the prologue as well as of the poem. This former text has not previously received more than cursory attention from linguistic scholars. Questions of authorship, date, and place of composition for Alexis were raised earlier by Otto Pacht, art historian of the St. Albans psalter, who suggests that the Anglo-Norman L ms. may constitute the original form of the Old French poem. He has pointed out that a linguistic study of the prologue, which occurs only in L ms., may yield information toward establishing the date and time of the poem's composition. Heretofore, scholars have generally accepted the findings of Gaston Paris, who maintained that L ms. harked back to a lost original, composed in France ca. 1050. Paris was inclined to believe that the prologue as well originated in France, as part of the original "O.