Social idealism in Ælfric's Colloquy

Abstract

Ælfric's Colloquy is, of course, first and foremost, a dialogue between a master and his pupils to give practice in the use of Latin at a conversational level. The pedagogic intention of the work is evident from the interlocutors' habit of lingering over commonly used words in various grammatical forms: for example, in a few opening lines (2–11) the deponent loqui appears as loqui, loquimur, loquamur and loqueris, together with the noun locutio, and within a little more than fifty lines (66–119) we find seven forms of the verb capere, two of them occurring four times each and one twice. Yet, equally certainly, this colloquy has more to it than just schoolboy exercises in declensions and conjugations. It has escaped the oblivion that has been the lot of its more humdrum fellows who – to use Garmonsway's personification – were assigned the rôle of literary Cinderellas, labouring ‘in obscurity in monastic classrooms to help boys learn their lessons’. It has long been acclaimed for its realism and for its ‘sociological picture of the occupational strata’ of Anglo-Saxon society; and, in our own day, Stanley B. Greenfield has called attention to its literary merits, ‘its fine organization and structure, dramatic in effect, with its pairing and contrasting, for example, of the king's bold hunter and the independent, timid fisherman…and with its lively disputation toward the end about which occupation is most essential’. In the present study I hope to demonstrate that it also draws on a background of ideas and that its longevity is partly due to this ingredient.