Devotional Literature and Practice in Medieval England: Readers, Reading, and Reception PDF
Preview Devotional Literature and Practice in Medieval England: Readers, Reading, and Reception
Devotional Literature and Practice in Medieval England DISPUTATIO Editorial Board Dallas G. Denery II, Bowdoin College Holly Johnson, Mississippi State University Clare Monagle, Macquarie University Cary J. Nederman, Texas A&M University Founding Editors Georgiana Donovin, Westminster College Richard Utz, Western Michigan University Previously published volumes in this series are listed at the back of the book. Volume 29 Devotional Literature and Practice in Medieval England Readers, Reading, and Reception Edited by Kathryn Vulić, Susan Uselmann, and C. Annette Grisé H BREPOLS British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. © 2016 Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. The image on the front cover of this book, British Library MS. Royal 14 E V f. 357, is made available under a Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication, and can be found online at: http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/ILLUMIN. ASP?Size=mid&IllID=37433. D/2016/0095/64 ISBN: 978-2-503-53029-1 e-ISBN: 978-2-503-54009-2 DOI 10.1484/M.DISPUT-EB.5.105976 Printed on acid-free paper Contents Introduction: Devotional Reading in Late Medieval England: Problems of Definition SUSAN USELMANN 1 ‘Þe lettere sleeþ’: Lollards, Literalism, and the Definition of Bad Readers ANNA LEwIS 35 Speculum vitae and ‘Lewed’ Reading KATHRyN VULIć 61 Representing Reading in Dives and Pauper ELIzABETH SCHIRMER 85 Meditative Reading and the Vespers Antiphon in the Monastic Office for Saint Cuthbert KARMEN LENz 119 Lectio divina and Scriptural Reading in Syon’s Vernacular Printed Books C. ANNETTE GRISé 137 A Matter of Convenience: Nicholas Love’s Mirror of Private Devotional Reading SUSAN USELMANN 159 vi Contents Printing, Propaganda, and Profit: Richard Pynson and the Life of St Radegund CHRISTINA M. CARLSON 195 ‘For the prouffyte of other’: Lady Margaret Beaufort and the Female Reader as Translator in The Mirrour of Golde to the Synfull Soule STEPHANIE MORLEy 217 Bodleian Library MS Holkham Miscellany 41 and the Modelling of women’s Devotion CATHERINE INNES-PARKER 237 Afterword: Adaptation, Negotiation, and Transformation C. ANNETTE GRISé 267 Introduction Devotional Reading in Late Medieval England: Problems of Definition Susan Uselmann I pray almyty God that this booke com not but to the hands of them that will be his faithfull lovers, and to those that will submitt them to the feith of Holy Church and obey the holesom understondyng and teching of the men that be of vertuous wisdam; wherfore it may not dwelle with him that is thrall to synne and to the devill. And beware thu take not on thing after thy affection and liking and leve another, for that is the condition of an heretique. But take everything with other. And trewely understonden, all is according to Holy Scripture and growndid in the same. Explicit to Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love, c. 1415 This volume of the Disputatio series focuses on changing conceptions of medi eval readers and devotional reading in late medieval England. As a contribution to the history of reading, it also seeks to reconsider or expand some of the dichotomies that often characterize analyses of devo tional readers and reading, such as author/reader, literate/illiterate, learned/’lewd’, Latin/vernacular, or clerical/lay. The famous scribal explicit to Julian of Norwich’s Revelations highlights the dynamic and often unstable categories of author, text, and reader which relate to this subject. Late medieval England, in par- ti cular, witnessed extraordinary change and growth in these categories, as an Susan Uselmann ([email protected]) is an Assistant Professor in the Humani ties Department at the University of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music. Devotional Literature and Practice in Medieval England: Readers, Reading, and Reception, ed. by Kathryn Vulić, Susan Uselmann, and C. Annette Grisé, DISPUT 29 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016), pp. 1–33 BREPOLS PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.DISPUT.5.110385 2 Susan Uselmann efflorescence in devotional writing converged with a burgeoning book market and an increasing number of the laity who could be considered literate. with vernacular texts likely to reach a wider audience, devotional writers increasingly sought to control the ways readers interacted with text and to represent readers as idealized, pious members of the church. The scribal explicit thus constructs a humble reader who will ‘obey the holesom understondyng and teching of the men that be of vertuous wisdam’ and ‘take everything with other’ as s/he reads. The depiction of an obedient reader highlights an important premise of this volume and of reader studies in general: that representations of reading and readers are often idealized as they are shaped to suit the needs of particular historical circumstances. Moreover, because he is not in fact the author of ‘this booke’, the scribe also belies the wide range of practices that can constitute even a specific rhetori- cal circumstance. Like many devotional writers, the scribe imagines an obedi- ent and pious reader, but he is also deeply aware of the multiplicity of histori- cal audiences, and the textual instability inherent in a culture in which works that have been initially created for one audience could be adapted, abbreviated or revised to serve another.1 He cautions the audience to ‘beware’ of certain reading practices that ‘take […] on thing after thy affection and likyng and leve another’. In his dual function as writer and reader, he mediates between the fic- tionalized audience and the meditative tradition that informs this contempla- tive work, making a rhetorical move that would be familiar to modern reader and reception theorists. Michel de Certeau asserts that a ‘text has meaning only through its readers; it changes along with them; it is ordered in accord with codes of perception that it does not control. It becomes a text only in its relation to the exteriority of the reader’.2 As witness to the potency of the ‘exteriority of the reader’ and the changing ‘codes of perception’ in late medieval England, the extant manuscripts of Julian’s text reveal a surprisingly wide range of devotional and literate practices. whether it is the late fourteenth-century contemplative tradition evidenced in the Short Version, or the outgrowth of ‘vernacular the- ology’ reflected in the Long Version, or the excerpts selected and placed along- side walter Hilton in a sixteenth-century florilegium, the Revelations cannot 1 As Alexandra Gillespie reminds us, ‘English texts produced in or for religious contexts do not reflect a static or stable culture. They reveal the unfixed boundaries of lay and clerical worlds and deal in both orthodoxy and dissent. They retained their capacity to change, as well as rein- force, the attitudes of those who encountered them’ (‘Production and Dissemination’, p. 110). 2 de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, pp. 170–71, quoted in Chartier, The Order of Books, p. 2.
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