Ormulum

The Ormulum or Orrmulum is a work of biblical exegesis, which was written in 1200 by an English monk named Orm (or Ormin ) in Middle English verse. The present meaning of Ormulums is mostly seen in the research, especially in Orms attempt an oriented at the former English pronunciation orthography, less in the content of the work. Orms approach a consistent phonetic spelling for the Linguistics of high value. He is also seen as a first attempt of an English spelling reform.

Author

Little is known about Orm. He gives his name in two places of his work, even as Orrm and once as Orrmin. The name is Old Norse origin Orm with the meaning worm, snake or dragon and was distributed in the Danelaw area. In the dedication Orm turns to a Walter, who was both his own brother and monk (probably in Arrouaise Order, which was followed by the Augustine rule) and the work was commissioned. Orm's dialect is associated with the East Midlands. On the basis of the fact that the Ormulum also contains sermons that deal with the Saints Peter and Paul, it is assumed that Orm the Abbey of Bourne in southern Lincolnshire belonged, the only Augustinian monastery in the East Midlands, which was dedicated to this saint. That Orm wrote his name even Orrm or Orrmin and the title of his work Orrmulum, due to its phonetic orthography that consistently doubled consonants, among other things, to identify preceding vowels as short.

Manuscript

The Ormulum is obtained only in a single, incomplete manuscript, which is in the Bodleian Library in Oxford (MS Junius 1). Of the approximately 80,000 verses, which should contain it, only about 10,000 are obtained, and 32 of 242 sermons in the TOC. Probably the Ormulum was not completed; but it is also as certain that parts have been lost later. It was written in summary writing on parchment of poor quality. The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature of Anglist David Lawton writes from the fact that the manuscript, apparently written on parchment residues of isolation and contempt vehicles even in Orm's own monastery.

Content and evaluation

The Ormulum containing paraphrased Gospel texts with detailed comments should be a resource for priests who were not accustomed to reading English texts, and give them a safe pronunciation in preaching. To this end, Orm developed a consistent orthography, which used different accents and special characters in addition to doubled consonants. This led to spellings such as ( ... ) forr he ne mayy nohht Elless / Onn Ennglissh writtenn rihht te word ( ... ) (from Orm's invitation to copyists, true to write off the book ).

The " strange mixture of Gospel Harmony and collection of sermons " is often ridiculed in the history of literature. The Anglist Theo Stemmler writes that the Ormulum by the " monotony of always built in the same fünfzehnsilbigen rhymeless Septenare and the relentless pedantry of the author " is unreadable and referred to it as " curious, even monstrous works". David Lawton writes of the " scary chattiness " of the work, which Orm had his material but processed thought and his views could often be picked up by a modern readership with benevolence. So he treated the relationship between Judaism and Christianity in a way that is unusual free of " vindictive arrogance ". Lawton came to the conclusion that apart from Orm's orthography nothing justifies his reputation as an eccentric. In many ways, Orms work let compare with the work of other authors, particularly that of Ælfric Grammaticus.

Orms orthographic system was adopted by anyone. The linguist David Crystal puts this down to the fact that it was neither easy to read nor to write rationally, as the word length increased dramatically. Writer would take much longer to write down texts in Orm system. His basic idea was, however, have been reasonable; the doubling of consonants may be useful to distinguish between, for example, hoping ( hoping ) and hopping ( hopping ).