Text name Ancrene Riwle File name cmancriw.m1 Manuscript Cotton Cleopatra C vi., British Library, London Date no MED date (Laing: C13a2, 1225-1230 for hand A) Dialect West Midlands (Dobson: eastern periphery of AB area, perhaps Worcester) Genre Religious treatise Edition Ackerman, Robert W. and Roger Dahood. 1984. Ancrene riwle. Introduction and Part I. Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 31. Binghamton, NY: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, State University of New York at Binghamton. Dobson, Eric J. 1972. The English text of the Ancrene riwle edited from B.M. Cotton ms. Cleopatra C vi. EETS O.S. 267. London: Oxford University Press.
Sample The Introduction and Part I are taken from Ackerman and Dahood, an edited text based on the Cotton Cleopatra manuscript. The rest of the sample is taken from the diplomatic edition of Dobson (pp. 39-246). Remarks Cotton Cleopatra is the earliest manuscript. The date of composition is estimated as 1215-1222 (Dobson). The whole of the text was written by hand A. He was not trained in AB orthography, but his language originates not far from the place of origin of AB. Hand B is a contemporary corrector of the manuscript, and is identified by Dobson as the author. His language is an early form of AB. Hand D is a slightly later corrector.
Other early mss. of the Ancrene Riwle include the following:
- Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, 402, MS A, 1230
- Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge 234/120, MS G, 1275-1300; previously Caius College, Cambridge 234, MS B (according to Hall)
- Cotton Nero A xiv, British Library, MS N, 1225-1250
- Cotton Titus D xviii, British Library, MS T, 1220 (according to Hall)
Corpus, although later than Cleopatra, is the best manuscript. It is written in pure AB. Although there are spelling differences between Corpus and Cleopatra, syntactic differences are minor and insignificant. For more information about the text, see Dobson 1976.
The parse is based on the translation in Savage and Watson.
File name CMANCRIW Text identifier M1 IR RELT ANCR Text name ANCR Author X Period M1 Date of original 1150-1250 Date of manuscript 1150-1250 Contemporaneity NON-CONTEMP Dialect WMO Verse or prose PROSE Text type REL TREAT Relationship to foreign original X Foreign original X Relationship to spoken language WRITTEN Sex of author X Age of author X Social rank of author X Audience description X Participant relationship X Interaction X Setting X Prototypical text category INSTR REL Sample SAMPLE X