The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Volume 2: Reader’s Guide PART 1. Christina Scull

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СКАЧАТЬ Riwle. A medieval guide or set of rules for anchoresses (female religious recluses), Ancrene Riwle is the longest and best known of a group of religious prose works written or translated in the thirteenth century in the West Midlands of England, in all of which Tolkien took an interest. Its eight sections prescribe a daily routine of prayers, but also offer practical guidelines for the conduct of life. Written originally in English, it proved so popular that it was translated into French and Latin and adapted for other audiences.

      The language of this work, Tolkien wrote in his preface to the Modern English translation by his former B.Litt. student *M.B. Salu,

      now appears archaic … and it is also “dialectal” to us whose language is based mainly on the speech of the other side of England, whereas the soil in which it grew was that of the West Midlands and the Marches of Wales. But it was in its day and to its users a natural, easy, and cultivated speech, familiar with the courtesy of letters, able to combine colloquial liveliness with a reverence for the already long tradition of English writing. [The Ancrene Riwle (1955), p. v]

      Tolkien called this variant of Middle English ‘Language (AB)’, as it was shared between two manuscripts traditionally referred to with sigla as ‘A’ and ‘B’: respectively, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge MS 402 (MS CCCC 402), apparently the earliest surviving manuscript of Ancrene Riwle, and MS Bodley 34 in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, which contains the works of the *Katherine Group. The language is usually referred to by others as the ‘AB language’.

      MS CCCC 402 bears the title Ancrene Wisse – it is the only manuscript of this work to include a title – and because of this medieval authority, some scholars have argued that Ancrene Wisse should be used to refer to the work in general. *E.J. Dobson, for example, comments in ‘The Affiliations of the Manuscripts of Ancrene Wisse’, *English and Medieval Studies Presented to J.R.R. Tolkien on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday (1962): ‘I use the title Ancrene Wisse to refer to the work as a whole, and do not follow the convention of restricting it to the text of [MS CCCC 402], in which I can see little if any point’ (p. 129). Ancrene Riwle is a corrected version of the title (Ancren Riwle) given the first complete edition of the work by its editor, James Morton, in 1853, and was used on all editions of the work, except Tolkien’s, published by the Early English Text Society (EETS; see *Societies and clubs). We chose Ancrene Riwle (except specifically for Tolkien’s edition of 1962) in the present book because of its predominant use by EETS, and because it was used for M.B. Salu’s translation (see below), though Ancrene Wisse was (properly) used for Tolkien’s edition.

      Tolkien was concerned with Ancrene Riwle as early as 1920, while teaching at the University of *Leeds, most particularly with MS CCCC 402, the only surviving manuscript of a revised version of the text. His interest was linguistic, as demonstrated in the several references to Ancrene Riwle in his article *Some Contributions to Middle-English Lexicography in the Review of English Studies for April 1925, and as he remarked in *Ancrene Wisse and Hali Meiðhad, published in Essays and Studies in 1929. In November 1930 he wrote to *Kenneth Sisam of Oxford University Press (*Publishers), in regard to a proposed edition of Ancrene Riwle, that he could produce a plain text, with a limited glossary, in a short time, once he completed work on the ‘Clarendon Chaucer’ (see *Geoffrey Chaucer); but a full text, with a complete glossary and grammar, would better serve the study of Middle English. He already had a set of rotographs (photographic facsimiles) of MS CCCC 402 for private study, and if he did not yet have it in mind to prepare an edition of that text, it seems to have occurred to him at this point.

      In the next few years he worked with various students, notably an Oxford B.Litt. candidate, *M.E. (Elaine) Griffiths, to prepare a partial transcription of MS CCCC 402, a nearly complete glossary, and an index. He also prepared a complete vocabulary and grammar of its language.

      In late 1935 Tolkien was formally engaged by the Early English Text Society to edit MS CCCC 402 for publication, as part of a proposed series of editions of Ancrene Riwle texts. (For the history that follows, see also Chronology, especially entries from Autumn 1935, January 1936, 5 February 1956, and 30 March 1959 et passim.)

      Almost at once Tolkien entered into a dispute with the governing committee of EETS as to whether the various manuscripts in the series should be transcribed line by line, exactly as written in the original text. The Committee argued that this approach was unnecessary and would take up too much space; a uniform page design was more important, for consistency and economy. Tolkien disagreed, in part because his transcription of MS CCCC 402, then much advanced, had been made line by line, and the thousands of references already in its glossary and index were keyed to folio and line in the manuscript, not to the typeset pages of the book planned by EETS. To alter these would have meant considerable expense of time and labour. But also, as Tolkien pointed out, a printed text which does not reproduce the precise order of its source will not serve a scholar interested in the finer points of the original manuscript. A line-by-line transcription, on the contrary, has

      enormous advantages – in giving a clue to the relative vertical association of words in corrupt passages, as well as indicating the places where special alterations, paleogr[aphical] forms, omissions and other errors are likely. To this is added the facility of reference in those places where, however careful the present edition, a future worker will inevitably be obliged to collate with the manuscript. [draft letter to A.W. Pollard, c. 16 January 1936, Tolkien Papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford]

      This argument continued for more than a year. The Secretary of EETS, *Mabel Day, herself later an editor of one of Ancrene Riwle texts, bore much of the burden, until in May 1937 a subcommittee devoted to Ancrene Riwle, and in August 1937 the full EETS Committee – their members perhaps weary of the debate (though still not without objection) – at last agreed to follow Tolkien’s view.

      Tolkien hoped to finish his transcription of the manuscript quickly from the set of rotographs, then collate it against the original at Cambridge. But he found it difficult to arrange access to the library at Corpus Christi College, and other matters demanded his attention, not least the publication of *The Hobbit in September 1937. Before long, the Second World War halted many projects, although from 1942 to 1949 work on the edition which had been abandoned by Elaine Griffiths was taken up by M.B. Salu. The latter completed the index as well as a successful thesis on the grammar and phonology of the text. Salu later made a Modern English translation of MS CCCC 402, which was published in 1955 as The Ancrene Riwle with a brief preface by Tolkien; see further, Descriptive Bibliography B23.

      In Michaelmas Term 1946, now as the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature officially concerned with Middle English studies at Oxford, Tolkien began to lecture on Ancrene Riwle and its language. In March 1948, faced with serious dental problems, he offered to hand over his still uncollated transcriptions of MS CCCC 402 if some other scholar would be willing to complete the edition for EETS. In the event, he was not replaced, and except for the production of specimen pages in August 1948 no further action seems to have been taken for eight years. One assumes, lacking evidence to the contrary, that Tolkien simply was left to get on with the work as best he could, though the continuing delay to its completion must have been an embarrassment to him, as he himself had been appointed to the EETS Committee in 1938 and to the Ancrene Riwle subcommittee in 1945.

      By February 1956 Tolkien’s edition became the concern of *R.W. Burchfield, who had succeeded Mabel Day as EETS Secretary. At that time Burchfield was also officially a D.Phil. candidate under Tolkien’s supervision, and the two were on friendly terms. At Tolkien’s suggestion Oxford palaeographer *N.R. Ker was approached to write an introduction to the edition (Ker had introduced R.M. Wilson’s 1954 edition of a different Ancrene Riwle manuscript at Cambridge), while Tolkien himself was to aim to deliver his finished transcription by Michaelmas Term that year. Apart from other demands on his time, however, there was still too much work to СКАЧАТЬ