Notes And Queries On The Ormulum - Softcover

C. H. Monicke

Softcover

ISBN 10: 046186620X ISBN 13: 9780461866209

Publisher: HardPress, 2021

Synopsis

Notes And Queries On The Ormulum by C. H. Monicke. This volume presents a detailed scholarly introduction and notes on the Ormulum, a long vernacular paraphrase of the Gospels attributed to Orm (Ormin). The work surveys the manuscript’s provenance, dating, and probable locality, and explains Orm’s orthography, pronunciation, and metre, placing the text within the history of the English language. Monicke discusses how the Ormulum relates to the Gothic, Danish, Icelandic, and Norman-French linguistic milieu, and compares Ormin’s language with Anglo-Saxon, later Saxon, and Chaucer to illustrate linguistic development in England. The author highlights the unique fifteen-syllable verse form with a cesura after the eighth syllable and a feminine ending, and the systematic doubling of consonants as a phonological clue, among other orthographic features. He engages with editors such as Meadows White and Tyrwhitt to situate the Ormulum in the broader tradition of English philology, arguing for its northern origin and dating within a late medieval period. The volume also covers grammar, syntax, and morphology, including strong and weak verbs, pronouns, and article usage, and surveys methodological issues in historical linguistics. The original Oxford edition of 1852 by R. Meadows White is here contextualized with notes and a glossary to illuminate the text.

Edition details

• Publisher: HardPress
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 046186620X
• ISBN 13: 9780461866209
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 64