ABSTRACT
In the Ancren Riwle is produced perhaps the greatest and most influential of the vernacular prose works in the Middle English period. On the whole the importance of English literature in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as compared with vernacular literature on the continent, depends more on its promise of future development than in any specific achievement of its own. There are many periods of English literary history for which their admirers have attempted to claim an importance and significance not willingly conceded by other scholars. The twelfth century is that in which the change from Old to Middle English finally takes place. The continued union of England and Normandy, and—equally important—the later French empire of the Angevin kings, had opened the way for the unrestricted entrance of French literary influence into England. In England, as elsewhere in Europe, the twelfth century is probably one of the most remarkable and significant of all the periods of mediaeval history.
