Liminal Spaces in The Ancrene Wisse
Liminal Spaces in The Ancrene Wisse

Summary/Abstract: The historical approach to the situation of female recluses who lived in small communities in the High Middle Ages has fostered the interest in the literature of formation produced at the time for such groups. While referring to the female need to remain in seclusion, one of these pieces, the early 13th-century Ancrene Wisse, also shows a profound concern over those servants who, following their ladies into their religious retirement, still belonged to the world and served as a link with the outer sphere. This work will analyze how Ancrene Wisse, while still dictating and enacting the discourse of enclosure for religious women, also permits a more lenient treatment on the issue of the presence of servants, a duality that renders the piece as a peculiar dialogic one.

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