ABSTRACT
It is a truism of scholarship that the context in which a work of literature is studied affects its interpretation. Thus, it is salutary to consider the Middle English Ypotis as a work of medieval children’s literature. In this simple poetic dialogue, the child Ypotis answers questions put to him by the emperor Adrian (Hadrian) on topics ranging from how many heavens there are to why people fast on Friday.1 Hitherto, Ypotis has been situated in two main traditions of question-and-answer dialogue, both widely reproduced in the Middle Ages: the medieval Latin Altercatio Hadriani et Epicteti Philosophi (AHE), surviving in over one hundred manuscripts (Daly and Suchier), along with the related texts of the Joca monachorum tradition (Suchier, Mittlellateinische); and the texts of L’enfant sage (“wise child”) tradition, considered derivative of AHE and found in many vernaculars across Europe (Suchier, L’Enfant; Utley). The popular Middle English Ypotis is extant in fifteen manuscripts dating from the first half of the fourteenth century through the fifteenth century (Utley, 740; Sutton, 115) and is found in a variety of manuscript contexts, from the poetry of the august Vernon manuscript, to the personal accounts of the Brome commonplace book.2
