The Influence of Richard Rolle and of Julian of Norwich on the Middle English Lyrics

1977 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 195
Author(s):  
Gay Clifford ◽  
Mary Arthur Knowlton
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
Julian Of Norwich ◽  
Richard Rolle

Rolle and the Pattern of Tracts in ‘The Pore Caitif’

Traditio ◽  
1983 ◽  
Vol 39 ◽  
pp. 456-465 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Teresa Brady
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Special Group ◽  
Richard Rolle

The anonymous compiler of the fourteenth-century Middle English treatise known as The Pore Caitif made extensive use of three works of Richard Rolle. His borrowings are from Emendatio vitae, The Form of Living, and The Commentary on the Canticles, and appear in eight tracts of a special group of ten pieces he calls ‘summe short sentencis exciting men to heuenli desiir’ (fol. 1v). Passages from Rolle's Form of Living were used in PC, ‘Desiir of Ihesu,’ ‘Of Mekenes,’ and ‘Of Actif Liif and Comtemplatif Liif.’ Sections from Emendatio vitae appear in PC, ‘Of Vertuous Pacience,’ ‘ϸe Councel of Christ,’ ‘Of Temptacioun,’ and ‘Desiir of Ihesu.’ A brief section of Rolle's Commentary on the Canticles is the source of the entire PC tract ‘ϸe Name of Ihesu,’ as Hope Emily Allen suggested in her monumental study of Rolle. A portion of this same source served for the first half of PC, ‘Of Mannes Wille,’ as Michael G. Sargent recently pointed out. The purpose of the present article is to suggest that the compiler of The Pore Caitif was indebted to Rolle not only for specific passages, but for the very schema and arrangement of his ten tracts of short sentences. It is my belief that Rolle's Emendatio vitae and The Form of Living, the two works of which the PC compiler made the most substantive use, were the governing influence on the order and arrangement of the ten short sentences.

VI.—The Speculum Vitae: Addendum

PMLA ◽  
1917 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-162
Author(s):  
Hope Emily Allen
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
English Poem ◽  
Richard Rolle ◽  
The Common

The present paper is intended to form a postscript to the last section of my study of the authorship of the Prick of Conscience, published in 1910. In the earlier article the traditional attribution of the poem to Richard Rolle, the hermit of Hampole, was attacked, and in conclusion a clue was followed which seemed to lead towards the Speculum Vitae, a similar Middle-English poem still unedited. A connection between the two poems had apparently been built up by J. Ullmann, in an elaborate analysis of similar stylistic peculiarities found in both, and he had used the evidence, thus apparently deduced, to urge the ascription (found in one copy of the Speculum) to Rolle, then always credited with the authorship of the Prick of Conscience. Ullmann's conclusion as to the common authorship of the two poems was used in the discussion as to the authorship of the latter by turning them about: since two other copies of the Speculum gave the work to William of Nassington, it was suggested, when Rolle's authorship of the Prick of Conscience seemed impossible, that the true author might be found in Nassington, who was possibly the author of the very similar Speculum. However, since the latter work was not in print, and had not at the time of writing been accessible to me in manuscript, the discussion as to the connection between the two works could only be incomplete and tentative.

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