The structure of Ancrene Wisse

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The structure of Ancrene Wisse

• Bella Millett
• University of Southampton

2
Elizabeth Salter (1988)

• The silences which seem to surround and
  isolate many English writings of the thirteenth
  and fourteenth centuries are, to the attentive
  ear, filled with the sounds of an active world
  which is only partly English, partly literary.

3
Preface lines 1578, 1634

• Nv, mine leoue sustren, this boc Ich todeale on
  eahte destinctiuns, thet 3e cleopieth dalen . .
  . in the second aren chapitres fiue, as fif
  stuchen efter the fif wittes . . .
• Now, my dear sisters, I am dividing this book
  into eight distinctions, which you call parts
  in the second there are five chapters, as it
  were five sections corresponding to the five
  senses . . .

4
Part 8 lines 810

• Nu is this leaste dale, as Ich bihet on earst,
  todealet ant isundret o lutle seoue stucchen.
• Now this last part, as I promised at the
  beginning, is divided and separated into seven
  sub-sections.

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medieval senses of distinctio

• an alternative term for divisio (division or
  subdivision)
• a means of dividing longer works, intermediate
  between book and chapter
• a method of Scholastic argument
• a list of the different senses of a word in
  Scripture (the biblical distinctio)

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Gratians DecretumCologne, Dombibliothek MS 127
(c. 1170)
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topic-based division

• structures topics rather than works
• Rouses on later C12 sermons a sequence of
  lists, rather than an overall division subdivided
  internally
• may be dynamic rather than static
• e.g. conditions of confession
• Bernard of Clairvaux 3
• late C12 56
• early C13 1516
• mid-C13 28

8
Thomas of ChobhamSumma de arte praedicandi (1215
x 1222)

• Quandoque enim diuiditur tota predicatio in simul
  accepta in plures partes, sicut aliquis auctor
  diuidit opus suum per plura capitula uel per
  plures libros . . .
• For sometimes the sermon as a whole is divided
  into several parts, as an author divides his work
  into several chapters or several books . . .

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types of division

• work-based division (horizontal axis)

ciuitas Church BVMhuman soulBabylon

• topic-based division (vertical axis)

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Thomas of Chobham Summa de arte praedicandi

• Secundo modo fit diuisio quando non totum
  negotium sed unicum uerbum diuiditur.
• The second kind of division takes place when a
  single word is divided rather than the whole
  thing.
• 7 methods inc. per species (e.g. 7 deadly sins)
  and cum diuiditur uox in significationes (the
  biblical distinctio).

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stuc(c)hen / chapitres

• Part 2
• divided into 5 chapitres / stuchen, corresponding
  to 5 senses
• Part 5
• 16 conditions of confession are described as
  stucchen
• Part 8
• divided o lutle seoue stucchen on separate topics

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Part 5 Confession
2 main points ase twa limen, ant either is
todealet
powers of confession 6 points
conditions of confession 16 points
and a postscript for the anchoresses...
3 against the Devil
3 for ourselves
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unstructured elements because of . . .

• influence from monastic tradition
• less structured aspects of scholastic sermon
• no ready-made structural model, or . . .
• use of more than one structural model
  simultaneously
• digression, shifts in argument, or uneven
  distribution of content between headings

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• explicit

Bella MillettUniversity of Southamptonenm_at_soton.
ac.ukhttp//www.soton.ac.uk/enm