A stylistic analysis of Jacob's Well (Chapters 1-50)

Abstract

The thesis is primarily a stylistic analysis of the first fifty chapters of Jacob's Well as published by the early English Text Society (OS 115), but the complete manuscript has been consulted and there are references to other chapters of the work. The study deals first with the relationship of Jacob's Well to the medieval tradition of sermons, moral treatises, manuals of instruction, and exemplaria. Comparison is made in particular with the Speculum Vitae, A Myrour to Lewde Men and Wymmen, A Litil Tretys on the Seven Deadly Sins, and the Alphabetum Narrationum. Then follows a study of the author's main design, including an analysis of the allegorical pattern of the well and of other figurative imagery, much of it conventional in content and application, but often significantly different in style from that of related works. The rest of the thesis is devoted to an analysis of other stylistic features at syntactical, phonological, and lexical levels under the following headings: (a) the language of legal obligation, (b) the language of story-telling, (c) the language of doctrine: exposition and exhortation. Comparison is made throughout with stylistic features of related works in order to assess the author's personal contribution. Although his style often seems uninspired, there is considerable evidence that the author was a `man of craft', capable of varying his style to suit his purpose, whose aim was to transform the common doctrinal matter of treatises into more presentable sermon form, and at the same time to create a `gret werk'. (D69951/86)

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