THE FORM OF THE SELF: "ANCRENE WISSE" AND ROMANCE

Abstract

How can you be together to bear witness to secrecy, seperation, singularity? (Derrida)1 It is difficult to separate the self from the world. To lock oneself away, to give away everything one owns, to think of nothing but the hereafter, is still to be somewhere, to have senses that perceive, and to be in an environment that `consists of opportunities for perception, of available information, of potential stimuli'.2 Marx, a man who thought more than most about the insistence of the world's matter, knew this well, and he warned that even the `unrelated, self-sufficient' being stood poised to rediscover `sensuous reality': Each of his senses compels him to believe in the existence of the world and the individuals outside him and even his profane stomach reminds him every day that the world outside him is not empty, but what is really fulfilling. Every activity and property of his being, every one of his vital urges becomes a need, a necessity, which his self-seeking transforms into seeking for other things and human beings outside him.3 Even those medieval Christians who retreated into the 'desert' made this painful discovery: monks and nuns tried to form communities so selfsufficient that they had no need to leave them, but they therefore came together in order to be apart. Women monastics had such problems attaining this sufficiency that it was usually `bare necessity, not slack morals' which turned them back to the world for physical sustenance.5 Similarly, while an anchorite received `prayers for the dying' on entering his or her cell (`ad impositionem defuncti super feretrum') and then had that cell `blocked up' ('obstruatur hostium domus eius),6 it was equally necessary for that anchorite to remain `part of the fabric of the community in which he or she lived'.' Anchoritic rules emphasized spiritual solitude rather than physical isolation, and they required rather than prohibited contact with those clergy, visitors, and servants who kept the anchorite spiritually and physically well. As a result, many an anchorhold formed 'a kind of centre in village life', a locus for a `spiritual commitment [which] paradoxically evoked a flurry of worldly activity'.8 Ancrene Wisse (1215-21) is a particularly good witness to the last aspect of these general tensions.9 It is clear that the three women for whom this rule was written actually lived with each other in a single dwelling;10 they were encouraged to invite those who gave them assistance to stay with them ('leadiecl to herbarhin'), and they were enjoined to keep at least two women servants ('beoo bisie twa wummen'.11 This 'solitude' was further crowded by new recruits over the years, and the resulting group of 'solitary' women finally grew so great in number (to `twenti ... over ma') that it became appropriate to characterize them as a 'community' ('cuuentD (fol. 69a).12 Ancrene Wisse also reflects a relationship between its author and these anchoresses which was clearly more than rhetorical: while the hortatory pose was common enough in anchoritic rules,13 the author of Ancrene lisse clearly knew the anchoresses prior to their enclosure (Ant ge mine leoue sustren habbep moni dei icrauet on me after riwle' (fol. ia)), and he saw them frequently afterwards as their 'director' and 'confessor'.14 In fact, in this way as in so many others, Ancrene Wisse offers a particularly vivid illustration of the paradoxes inherent in the solitary life because it tended to convert them into a strikingly textual form: although it is a document that recommends the solitary life by describing just how good it is to be alone (`hu god is to beon ane' (fol. 4ib)), it is clear that the very success of this recommendation served, first and foremost, to bring people together. Form, as the title of this essay indicates, is the particular aspect of this textual phenomenon that I wish to examine, and what I hope to demonstrate is the extent to which Ancrene Wisse's textual version of solitude's problems actually led to textual solutions: if this text is riven by the paradoxes of solitary living it is precisely because these paradoxes produced this text. …