Ormulum

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 of England. 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).

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" derives 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 meter probably dictated the choice between each of the two forms of the name. 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.

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