Ancrene Wisse | J. R. R. Tolkien (essay date 1929)
J. R. R. Tolkien (essay date 1929)
SOURCE: Tolkien, J. R. R. “Ancrene Wisse and Hali Meidhad.” In Essays and Studies by Members of the English Association, vol. XIV, collected by H. W. Garrod, pp. 104-26. London: Oxford University Press, 1929.
[In the following excerpt, Tolkien offers a linguistic study of Ancrene Wisse and its assorted manuscript variations.]
I
The Ancrene Wisse has already developed a ‘literature’, and it is very possible that nothing I can say about it will be either new or illuminating to the industrious or leisured that have kept up with it. I have not. But my interest in this document is linguistic, and unless I am mistaken, a purely linguistic aspect of the problem will bear renewed attention, or repetition. I even believe that it may be of value to set forth a line of argument that is based on assertions of which the proper proof (or retractation) must wait for a later...
[The entire page is 5495 words long]
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