The Figure of Christ in the Ancrene Wisse

Abstract

It has long been recognized that the twelfth-century Ancrene Wisse is a significant milestone in the development of English prose as a literary form.

What has not been sufficiently recognized is that the achievement of its unknown author is not limited to simple hetorical expertise. He was obviously trained in the use of rhetoric and the structure and style of the Ancrene Wisse are carefully calculated; but he was not, as R.A. Waidron suggests, "obsessed with the desire for clarity of exposition."1 He was writing a sermon, certainly, but a sermon for a very limited female audience and, as the principal aim of any preacher must be to persuade fully,2 he realized that emotional appeal would have to be at least as important as rational argument if he were to succeed in his attempt to formulate a viable Ancrene Riwle.

It is the purpose of the present article to examine Book VII of the Ancrene Wisse with a view to showing how this emotional appeal is linked to a poetic mode of expression used mainly in connection with the figure of Christ.