A Concordance to the Ancrene Wisse

Important tool for study of prose style, lexis, and the history of the English language - and for interpretation of Ancrene Wisse.

The Concordance to Ancrene Wisse’ is a computer-based concordance to the early Middle English prose rule for anchoresses, Ancrene Wisse. The base text used in this concordance is J.R.R. Tolkien’s edition of the Corpus Christi College, Cambridge manuscript 402 (Early English Text Society, 1962).
Scholarly discussion of Ancrene Wisse usually refers to Tolkien’s diplomatic edition of this manuscript and a definitive critical edition based on all manuscripts has yet to appear. Folio and line references in the Concordance are to the Tolkien edition and follow the manuscript line for line. The Concordance is an important tool for the study of prose style, lexis, the history of the English language, and, of course, indispensable for all literary and linguistic study of Ancrene Wisse itself.

JENNY POTTS is a former research student at Liverpool University and a freelance copy editor; LORNA STEVENSON; completed her doctoral thesis at Liverpool University; JOCELYN WOGAN-BROWN is Professor of English at Fordham University, New York