LITERATURE QUESTIONS
MEDIEVAL LITERATURE AND CULTURE
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Question
[CLICK ON ANY CHOICE TO KNOW THE RIGHT ANSWER]
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Priests should be used as examples of ecclesiastical life.
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Priests should be avoided, because men are bad influences.
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Priests should offer anchoresses their only connection to the outside world.
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Priests should be honored, because men are naturally more spiritual.
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Detailed explanation-1: -There are a lot of versions of the text, but it is thought that it was first written for three sisters who lived in three separate anchor houses, so that they were close by one another, but never saw one another.
Detailed explanation-2: -Ancrene Wisse (Ancrene Riwle) is the best example of the prose of the middle English period. It is a book written for a community of three Anchoresses living in a retreat near a church. This anonymous treatise offers a complete guide to, and a warm justification of the anchoress’ life.
Detailed explanation-3: -’Ancrene Wisse’, sometimes also given as the ‘Ancrene Riwle’, means a ‘guide for anchoresses’. It was written for these three sisters, at some point between 1225 and 1240.
Detailed explanation-4: -An anchoress was a woman who was walled into a cell to live a life of prayer and contemplation. (The male equivalent was an ‘anchorite’.) Anchoresses were enclosed in their cells and had no way to get out.