The Parsed Corpus of
Middle English Poetry (PCMEP)
PCMEP Text Information
Wise Admonitions
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About the text:
About the edition and manuscript base:
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| Text name: | Wise Admonitions |
| Alternative names: | Sermon on the Anniversary of Saint Nicholas; I you rede ye sitten still; Biblical Texts Paraphrased |
| Content: | The poem Wise Admonitions has the form of a sermon. It combines Latin text and Latin bible quotations with English paraphrases and commentary. The main theme of the sermon is taken from the Book of Wisdom 10:10, iustum deduxit per vias rectas '[God/Wisdom] led the righteous on the right way.' Brown (1931) also linked the poem to the feast of St. Nicholas and suggests that the reading of the poem was followed by a production of a St. Nicholas play (as suggested in lines 39-40). For further information on form and content of the poem, see Morey (2000: 127-30). |
| Genre/subjects: | spiritual advice, sermon, religious instruction, Bible paraphrase |
| Dialect of original composition: | Unknown The origin of the archetype has not been investigated in any detail. A northern dialect can be ruled out because some rhymes presuppose that Old English long a had changed to and rhymed with Old English long o (e.g. thereto : so, ll. 25-6), as would have been the case south of the river Humber (Brunner 1935: 224). In general, the rhymes of the original do not seem to pose difficulties for the scribe. It is therefore conceivable that the dialect of the original and that of its West-Midlands manuscript witness are comparable. |
| Date of original composition: | 1200-1250 The reference to a play of St. Nicholas suggests that the poem had been composed "by the middle of the thirteenth century" (Brown 1931: 601). The poet turned to service-books for the link between the veneration of St. Nicholas and the homily’s theme iustum deduxit as well as the specific expression of that theme (Brown 1931: 599). Such books, for instance the Hereford Breviary (compiled between c. 1240-68), may have been composed from the early 13th century on. Thus, c. 1200 may function as the terminus post quem for the text. |
| Suggested date: | 1225 |
| PCMEP period: | 1b (1200-1250) |
| Versification: | couplets, two-line, aa |
| Index of ME Verse: | 1405 (IMEV), 1405 (NIMEV) |
| Digital Index of ME Verse: | 2338 |
| Wells: | Supplement 5, 5.3d |
| MEC HyperBibliography: | Serm.St.Nich. |
About the edition and manuscript base:
| Edition: | Brown, Carleton F. 1931. 'An Early Mention of a St. Nicholas Play in England.' Studies in Philology 28. 595-599. |
| Manuscript used for edition: | Cambridge UK, Trinity College B.14.39 (323), ff. 26r-27r |
| Online manuscript description: | LAEME Manuscripts of the West Midlands (item 13) Trinity College Cambridge: The James Catalogue Of Western Manuscripts |
| Manuscript dialect: | West-Midlands The orthography of the copyist of the poem is very variable. Following Skeat (1907: xiv), manuscripts with this characteristic were once believed to have been written by Norman scribes, who did not fully understand the English material they were copying. However, this conclusion is no longer considered valid (e.g. Laing 1999). Instead, the variable spelling probably reflects other factors, such as variation in spoken thirteenth century English, pre-existing variation in the source manuscript, or scribal training and preferences. Brunner finds that "the home of the scribe must be assumed to be in the South-Western parts of England, even if not directly in the territory of Wessex [translated from German original]" (1935: 225). For example, the copyist probably had a rounded o-sound (e.g. boe l. 29, ysoe l. 18, ibid.), which is a feature compatible with a West-Midlands dialect. LAEME localizes the scribal dialect to "E[ast] Herefords[hire]." |
| Manuscript date: | s. xiii-ex Brunner (1935: 221) dated the manuscript to the first half of the thirteenth century. Wells (1932: 1350) dates the manuscriopt "c. 1250." Similarly, the online version of the Middle English Dictionary lists the manuscript date as c1250. However, the manuscript is now usually dated somewhat later because its terminus post quem is fixed at 1253 by a Latin epitaph of Bishop Robert Grosseteste of Lincoln, who died that year (Brown 1932: xx, and references therein). Laing (1999: 252) describes the manuscript as a "late-13th-century verse miscellany." |
About the file:
| File name: | M1b.WiseAdmon |
| ID: | WiseAdmon,x.y.z: x=page, y=line, z=token |
| Word count: | 823 |
| Token count: | 80 |
| Line count: | 132 |
Other:
| General notes: | There are two modern editions of the text (Brown 1931, Brunner 1935). |
| Remarks on parses: | The line breaks follow Brown's (1931: 595-599) edition. The line breaks in the Latin paragraphs are indicated, but are not counted towards the line counts. The sources of the Latin passages are provided as CODE comments as indicated in Brown's or Brunner's editions. The parses are generally unproblematic. Difficult readings have been indicated as CODE comments. |
References
Brown, Carleton F. 1931. 'An Early Mention of a St. Nicholas Play in England.' Studies in Philology 28. 594-601. (available online)
Brown, Carleton F. 1932. English Lyrics of the XIIIth Century. Oxford: Clarendon.
Brunner, Karl. 1935. 'Zwei Gedichte aus der Handschrift Trinity College Cambridge 323.' Englische Studien 70. 221-43.
Laing, Margaret. 1999. 'Confusion "wrs" Confounded: Litteral Substitution Sets in Early Middle English Writing Systems.' Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 100.3. 251-270.
Morey, James H. 2000. Book and Verse: A Guide to Middle English Biblical Literature. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
Wells, John E. 1932. Fifth Supplement to a Manual of the Writings in Middle English 1050-1400. Additions and Modifications to July 1932. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.