The materiality of Middle English anchoritic devotion / edited by Michelle M. Sauer and Jenny C. Bledsoe.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Sauer, Michelle M., 1972- editor.

Bledsoe, Jenny C., editor.

Albert C. Baugh Book Fund.

Series:

Early Middle English.

Early Middle English

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Christian literature, English (Middle)--History and criticism.

Christian literature, English (Middle).

Material culture in literature.

Hermits in literature.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

138 pages : illustrations (black and white) ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Leeds : Arc Humanities Press, [2021]

Summary:

"Anchorites and their texts, such as 'Ancrene Wisse', have recently undergone a reevaluation based on material circumstances, not just theological import. The articles here address a variety of anchoritic or anchoritic-adjacent texts, encompassing guidance literature, hagiographies, miracle narratives, medical discourse, and mystic prose, and spanning in date from the eighth through the fourteenth centuries. Exploring reclusion and materiality, the collection addresses a series of overlapping themes, including the importance of touch, the limits of religious authority, and the role of the senses. Objects, metaphorical and real, embodied and spiritual, populate the pages. These categories are permeable, with flexible and porous boundaries, demonstrating the conflation of ideas, concepts, and manifestations in medieval materiality. In fact, the permeability of these categories demonstrates how materiality can reshape our approach to medieval texts. It leaves room for directions for future study, including the application of material analysis to previously unstudied objects, spaces, and literary artifacts."--Page 4 of cover.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: Bodies, Objects, and the Significance of Things in Early Middle English Reclusion: An Introduction / Jenny C. Bledsoe

Clothing and Female Reclusion in The Life of Mary of Egypt and The Life of Christina of Markyate / Anna McKay

Materiality, Documentary Authority, and the Circulation of the Katherine Group / Jenny C. Bledsoe

Framing Materiality: Relic Discourse and Medieval English Anchoritism / Michelle M. Sauer

Relics and the Recluse's Touch in Goscelin's Miracles of St. Edmund / Sophie Sawicka-Sykes

Mary, Silence, and the Fictions of Power in Ancrene Wisse 2.269-481 / Joshua S. Easterling

The Anchoritic Body at Prayer in Goscelin of Saint-Bertin's Liber confortatorius / Alicia Smith

Stupor in John of Gaddesden's Rosa medicinae / Laura Godfrey

The Material of Vernacular English Devotion: Temptation and Sweetness in Ancrene Wisse and Richard Rolle's Form of Living / Jennifer N. Brown

The Archaeological Context of an Anchorite Cell at Ruyton, Shropshire / Victoria Yuskaitis.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Albert C. Baugh Book Fund.

Other Format:

ebook version :

ISBN:

1641894873

9781641894876

OCLC:

1249799742

Publisher Number:

99990694109