Richard Rolle: Uncollected Prose and Verse

This volume presents a variety of mainly unpublished texts relating to the Yorkshire hermit, Richard Rolle. It contains a number of texts primarily by Rolle, but omitted from the earlier title in this series (293), Richard Rolle: Prose and Verse (1988), including a new edition of Rolle’s English lyrics, based upon a critical examination of all known manuscript witnesses. Three previously unpublished texts are included here because they were ascribedto Rolle in the Middle Ages. There are good grounds for considering one, a commentary on the lessons from the Office of the Dead, to be authentic Rolle, and the editor argues that the second, Of thre wyrkyngs in mans saul , is probably so. The edition concludes with three unpublished Northern texts which, though anonymous, are devoted to the eremitical life.

Ralph Hanna is Professor of Palaeography at the University of Oxford, and Tutorial Fellow in English at Keble College.