Vernacular liminality in the “Ancrene Wisse” group

In this thesis I argue that despite their seemingly strong alignment with Latinate traditions, there are grounds for perceiving in the early thirteenth-century anchoritic texts Ancrene Wisse, Hali Meiðhad, and Seinte Katerine elements of Middle English vernacularity as described in critical writing such as the 1999 anthology The Idea of the Vernacular. I approach this issue by first establishing a theoretical and historical schema within which one may perceive the presence of a "vernacular ideology" in these works, and then proceed to analyse the individual instances of vernacularity they contain as evinced in, for instance, translations and subversions of the Latin socioliterary sphere. I argue in conclusion that these writings represent not only a unique, linguistically hybridised textuality, but that their vernacular elements create an unusual space of freedom for their female anchoritic readers and may offer us further insight into the spiritual practices of thirteenth-century anchoresses.