ABSTRACT
Metaphors for writing in the Ancrene Wisse, an early thirteenth-century rule for anchoresses, though perhaps not the most striking in this collection of essays, are nevertheless crucial for their mediation between oral and literary cultures. The Ancrene Wisse was composed at a time when English as a written language struggled for survival. We have very few books in English extant from this period, and even the Ancrene Wisse was once thought to have been written originally in French or Latin. 1 Yet the group of authors and scribes who wrote it, as well as the Katherine Group, and the Wohunge Group, not only created books in English: they did so in a standard dialect that incorporated elements of oral culture at the same time that it elevated English to the status of a literary language.
