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The ''Ormulum'' or ''Orrmulum'' is a twelfth-century work of biblical exegesis, written by a monk named Orm (or Ormin) and consisting of just under 19,000 lines of early Middle English verse. Because of the unique phonetic orthography adopted by its author, the work preserves many details of English pronunciation existing at a time when the language was in flux after the Norman Conquest. Consequently, it is invaluable to philologists in tracing the development of the language. After a preface and dedication, the work consists of homilies explicating the biblical texts set for the mass throughout the liturgical year; it was intended to be consulted as the texts changed, and is agreed to be tedious and repetitive when read straight through. Only about a fifth of the promised material is in the single manuscript of the work to survive, which is in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Orm was concerned with priests' ability to speak the vernacular, and developed an idiosyncratic spelling system to guide his readers in the pronunciation of the vowels. He used a strict poetic metre to ensure that readers know which syllables are to be stressed. Modern scholars use these two features to reconstruct Middle English as Orm spoke it (Burchfield 1987, p. 280). ==Origins== Unusually for work of the period, the ''Ormulum'' is neither anonymous nor untitled. The author names himself at the end of the dedication: : At the start of the preface, the author identifies himself again, using a different spelling of his name, and gives the work a title: : The name "Orm" is derived from Old Norse, meaning ''worm'', ''serpent'' or ''dragon''. With the suffix of "myn" for "man" (hence "Ormin"), it was a common name throughout the Danelaw area of England. The choice between the two forms of the name probably was dictated by the meter at each use. The title of the poem, "Ormulum", is modeled after the Latin word ''speculum'' ("mirror") (Matthew 2004, p. 936), so popular in the title of medieval Latin non-fiction works that the term speculum literature is used for the genre. The Danish name is not unexpected; the language of the ''Ormulum'', an East Midlands dialect, is stringently of the Danelaw (Bennett and Smithers 1982, pp. 174–75). It includes numerous Old Norse phrases (particularly doublets, where an English and Old Norse term are co-joined), but there are very few Old French influences on Orm's language (Bennett 1986, p. 33). Another—likely previous—East Midlands work, the ''Peterborough Chronicle'', shows a great deal of French influence. The linguistic contrast between it and the work of Orm demonstrates both the sluggishness of the Norman influence in the formerly Danish areas of England and the assimilation of Old Norse features into early Middle English (Bennett 1986, pp. 259–63). According to the work's dedication, Orm wrote it at the behest of Brother Walter, who was his brother both ' (biologically) and as a fellow canon of an Augustinian order (Matthew 2004, p. 936). With this information, and the evidence of the dialect of the text, it is possible to propose a place of origin with reasonable certainty. While some scholars, among them Henry Bradley, have held that the likely origin is Elsham Priory in north Lincolnshire (Bennett and Smithers 1982, pp. 174–75), as of the mid-1990s it has become widely accepted that Orm wrote in the Arrouaisian Bourne Abbey, in Bourne, Lincolnshire (Treharne 2000, p. 273). Two additional pieces of evidence support this conjecture: firstly, the abbey was established by Arrouaisian canons in 1138, and secondly, the work includes dedicatory prayers to Peter and Paul, who are the patrons of Bourne Abbey (Parkes 1983, pp. 115–27). The Arrouaisian rule was largely that of Augustine, so that its houses often are loosely referred to as Augustinian (Jack, George, in Matthew and Harrison 2004, pp. 936–37; Parkes 1983, pp. 115–27). The date of composition is impossible to pinpoint. Orm wrote his book over a period of decades and the manuscript shows signs of multiple corrections through time (Burchfield 1987, p. 280). Since it is apparently an autograph, with two of the three hands in the text generally believed by scholars to be Orm's own, the date of the manuscript and the date of composition would have been the same. On the evidence of the third hand, a collaborator who entered the pericopes at the head of each homily, it is thought that the manuscript was finished circa 1180, but Orm may have begun the work as early as 1150 (Parkes 1983, pp. 115–27). The text has few topical references to specific events that could be used to identify the period of composition more precisely. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Ormulum」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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