Essays exploring the great religious and devotional works of the Middle Ages in their manuscript and other contexts.
Michael G. Sargent’s scholarship on late medieval English devotional literature has been hugely influential on the fields of Middle English literature, religious studies, and manuscript studies. His prolific work on a great rangeof English and French texts, including visionary writing, devotional guidance, and drama, devoting scrupulous attention to the physical forms in which these texts circulated, has established the scope and impact of religious writing across the social spectrum in England, enabling a nuanced understanding of the complex literary interactions between the cloister and the world.
The essays in this volume demonstrate and pay tribute to Sargent’s influence, extending and complementing his work on devotional texts and the books in which they traveled. The themes of translation, manuscript transmission and the varieties of devotional practice are to the fore. Inspired by Sargent’s work on Love’s Middle English translation of pseudo-Bonaventuran devotional texts, some chapters explore other Middle English translations within this tradition, considering the implications of translation strategies for shaping readers’ practices, while others examine Carthusian and Birgittine texts as they appear in new contexts, probing the continuing influence of these orders on devotional life and theological controversy. Whether looking at devotional guidance, visionary texts, or hagiography, each contribution works closely with texts in their material contexts, always considering a question central to Sargent’s scholarship: how texts gain distinct cultural meanings within particular circumstances of copying, transmission and ownership.
JENNIFER N. BROWN is Professor of English and World Literatures at Marymount Manhattan College; NICOLE R. RICE is Professor of English at St John’s University, New York.
Contributors: Kevin Alban, A.R. Bennett, Jennifer N. Brown, Marleen Cré, Mary C. Erler, David Falls, C. Annette Grisé, Marlene Villalobos Hennessy, Ian Johnson, Stephen Kelly, Laura Saetveit Miles, Ryan Perry, Fiona Somerset, Gordon Whatley,
Table of Content
‘Michael Sargent – An Appreciation’ – Jennifer N. Brown and Nicole R. Rice
Part I. Manuscript Transmission and Textual Adaptation
Beinecke MS 317 and its New Witness to the Latin Door Verses from London Charterhouse: A Story of Carthusian and Birgittine Literary Exchange – Laura Saetveit Miles
Martyred Masons: The Legend of the
Quattuor Coronati in Some Medieval English Contexts – E. Gordon Whatley
What Do the Numbers Mean? The Case for Corpus Studies – A. R. Bennett
Cargo in the Arbor: On the Metaphysics of Books and Scholarly Editions – Stephen Kelly
Part II. Translated Texts and Devotional Implications
Rendering Readers’ Soulscapes: Variant Translation of Interiority in the Late Medieval English Pseudo-Bonaventuran Tradition – Ian Johnson
Conservative Affectivity and the Middle English
Meditationes de Passione Christi – Ryan Perry
Reflecting English Lay Piety in the Mirrors of Oxford, Bodleian Library MS e Museo 35 – David Falls
Part III. Rhetorical Strategies and Spiritual Transformations
‘Trowes þou, fool, þat þis kake of brede Is God?’: Spiritual Bread and Bodily Meat in Middle English Women’s Visionary Texts – C. Annette Grise
Walter Hilton’s Confessions in
De imagine peccati and
Epistola de utilitate et prerogativis religionis – Marleen Cre
How Canon Lawyers Read the Bible: Hilton’s
Scale 2 and the
Wordes of Poule – Fiona Somerset
Part IV. Texts and Contours of Religious Life
Beauty in Liturgy: The Carmelites and the Resurrection – Kevin Alban
Otherworldly Visions: Miracles and Prophecy among the English Carthusians, c. 1300-1535 – Marlene Villalobos Hennessy
The Body of the Nun and the Syon Abbey ‘Additions’ – Jennifer N. Brown
The Early Sixteenth Century at Syon: Richard Whitford and Elizabeth Gibbs – Mary C. Erler
About the author
NICOLE R. RICE is Professor of English at St John’s University, New York.
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