. Excerpt from Peggy An Knapp's "The Style of John Wycliffe's English Sermons", Mouton, 1977, Chapter 5, page 45 "The Words: Diction, Allusion & Irony".
The Words: Diction, Allusion and Irony
It was my contention in Chapter IV that Wyclif's zeal to bring the fourteenth-century Church closer to his idea of New Testament teaching led him to present his case on two distinct levels. The early Wycliffite Bible represents the attempt of scholars to reach a learned audience and reform the Church from the inside, while the later version speaks directly to priests of the lower echelons and to the lay people themselves, In an analogous way, Wyclif's latin treatieses and sermons are organized and worded according to the elaborate divisios of the schools, while the English sermons and tracts, stripped of those issues which the Reformer regarded as theological subtleties, argue the same case in terms the people could grasp immediately. In De Comino Divino, for example, the debate of the relationship of God's grace to man's merit uses the traditional categories of merit de condino and de congruo,1 but in Gospel Sermon XXXIV the same matter is discussed at some length in very simple terms, with only a glanding reference to substance and accident and an insult to Pelaghius (an 'ydiot'), betraying the master of the schols (I, 91-92). Wyclif was without doubt the finest theologian at Oxford in his generation, although "his stature was less than Occam's or Bradwardine's" before him,2 and the strong resistance of the University to the anti-Lollard campaigns of Archbishop Courtenay and his colleagues attests to Wyclif's very strong influence there. Yet with his expulsion from Oxford in 1382 (if Talbert's dating of the sermons is correct, many years ealier3), he was able to adopt a new idiom, seek a different audience, and present his whole case on a vastly different level. Perhaps, like his teacher Richard Fitzralph a generation before, he abandoned the debates of the schools with deliberate scorn,4 seeing there the sterility which later generations frequently found so obvious.
Two things aided Wyclif in shifting from the forms and diction of Oxford to those of his rural parish. The Latin written as Oxford was no longer a pure and effective literary instrument. So cumbersome had it become that one commentator claims the easiest way to understand it is to translate it into English.5 As a consequence, Wyclif had probably been thinking in English all the time he was writing in Latin. His second advantage was that he used the Bible a great deal in his scholastic proofs. The language of the parables of Jesus and the figures of Paul and the other epistle-writers kept his mind in touch with common affairs. He was one exception, apparently, to G. R. Owst's implication that the schoolmen had lost touch with 'Life'.6
Therefore only rarely does Wyclif have real difficulty in translating a theological concept into idiomatic English, although one can imagine that he often needed to create his own English phrases. Some difficulty is apparent in his attempt to transmit relationships clearly: "And so he was in [the tomb] pree daies, but not bi pes pree daies pere: (II,52), which apparently means that some part of each of three days Christ remained buried but not all of each day. "Crist seip not pat ech in blis is more pan ever is Baptist, but he seip pat ech in blis is more pan here is Baptist" (II,6), means that in heaven each believer is greater than John the Baptist was on earth. Yet such cases are so rare that the modern reader is startled when he finds obscurity rather the lucidity.
The simplicity of the diction of these sermons is the result of several rather consistently applied techniques. References to his own experiences are excluded. Vocabulary is limited by the employment of common words in new or expanded senses to avoid unfamiliar theological language, and by the explanation or pairing of long or unfamiliar words when they do occur. Bold and colorful language is very common. Insult is often achieved through metaphor, identification of a modern phenomenon with a Biblical one, careful manipulation of the concept of newness, or irony.
There is an extraordinary lack of personal reference of any kind in these sermons. An allusion to the wiring of De Veritate Scripturae: "In pis mater [the truth of the Bible] as heave ynow stryfen in Latyn wib adversaries of Goddis lawe…" (I, 79) is as close as Wyclif comes to speaking of himself.7 There are no reminiscences of childhood places or happenings, no resentment toward named persons, and no allusions to the events of his life. Only ten times in this large corpus does 'I' occur, and then almost exclusively in constructions such as 'I wot' or I ween'. This may be interpreted as part of the attempt to make these sermon guides widely useable without change by other Lollard preachers. In addition the impersonality contributes to the effect of simplicity, since almost any mention of Wyclif's mature life would be concerned with scholarly debate and therefore out of the reach of most of his lay audience. The disposition to treat matters of personal concern to him abstractly is another manifestation of a mind that attacks the system which allows abuses rather than the specific abuses themselves.8
The vocabulary employed in these sermons is so close to modern usage that Arnold lists fewer than seven hundred words in his gloss to over thirteen hundred fifty pages of Wyclif's sermons and tracts.9 All but two of these words (debletis and philorgis) he is able to trace to common Middle English usage. Rolle's Psalter was translated with the specific goal of introducing new words from the Vulgate into the vernacular to assist those who knew little or no Latin;10 Wyclif is just as specifically rejecting that technique in his attempt to "strange not in speche from undirstondinge of pe puple" (I, 79). In order to avoid Latin coinages, Wyclif often expands a native term to express a theological concept. Unbileveful (II, 149), is his substitute for incredulous; indedlynesse (II, 35), for immortality; instorid (II, 253), for contained in ; bie azen for redeem; and nounpower (II, 374), or unpower (I, 371) for inability. Byknowe (II, 243) expresses confess; eve-worpi (II, 323), equivalent or comparable; forbinking (II, 201), repentance; morynge (I, 65), making greater; unholden (I, 139), under no obligation; unnobley (II, 271), ignominy; and unpank (I, 256), ill will.
When a long or otherwise difficult term does appear it is very often explained in simpler words or paired with a more familiar term. Wyclif explains extortions as "wrong pat he dide to his nei3bore: (I,3), "an hundred skippis of corn" (I have followed the pringed edition in italicising all quoted scripture), as "more pan a quarter" (I,22), and "commessaciouns" as "ofte etingis" (II, 224). He employs pairs such as, "God tellip or specifiep" (I, 15), and "Crist himsilf expownep and seip" (I, 27).
Even so mthere are some polysyllabid words which look overly Latinate among the homely terms which form their context. Superfluous and its derivatives are quite common in the sermons (but never appear in the Bible texts); the OED lists many dates for them a good deal before ?Wyclif. Contrariouste (I, 344; II, 68, 375), appeared in the middle of the fourteenth century and ramained in use until at least Lydgate. Preciousite (I, 376) is cited first from these sermons, but became widely current in the next century.
