The late-medieval movement into 'vernacular theology,' as it has come to be called, inspired many forms of literary expression, in all the languages of Europe. Spanning a wide field, the contributors to this volume consider hagiography, translations of and commentaries on scripture, accounts of visionary experiences, and devotional literature. Their essays illuminate encounters with the divine mediated through language, bringing into play a diversity of national cultures and disciplinary points of view. They also engage vital social and political issues connected with religious experience, including challenges to authority, reinterpretations of texts, and renegotiations of gender roles.

Autorentext

RENATE BLUMENFELD-KOSINSKI is Professor of French and director of the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh. NANCY WARREN is Assistant Professor in the Department of English, Utah State University. She is the author of Spritual Economies: Female Monasticism in Later Medieval England. DUNCAN ROBERTSON is Professor of French and Spanish at Augusta State University and author of Medieval Saints' Lives.

Inhalt

Introduction; R.Blumenfeld-Kosinski, D.Robertson & N.Warren ENGLISH Rolle Playing: 'And the Word Became Flesh'; L.Manter Disruptive Simplicity: Gaytryge's Translation of Archbishop Thoresby's Injunctions; M.Fitzgibbons Excitative Speech: Latinate Theory and Vernacular Consequences in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries; F.Somerset FRENCH Translating Scripture for Ma dame de Champagne : The Old French 'Paraphrase' of Psalm Forty-Four (Eructavit); M.Powell The Mirror and the Rose: Marguerite Porete's Reading of Jean de Meun; B.Newman Degulleville's Pèlerinage de Jésus-Christ : A Poem of Courtly Devotion; M.Boulton The Royal Vernacular: Poet and Patron in Christine de Pizan's Charles V and the Sept psaumes allégorisés ; L.Waters SPANISH Female Patronage of Vernacular Religious Works in Fifteenth-Century Castile: Aristocratic Women and Their Confessors; R.E.Surtz Cisneros and the Translation of Women's Spirituality; E.T.Howe 'Este gran Dios de las cavallerías' (This Great God of Chivalric Deeds): St. Teresa's Performances of the Novels of Chivalry; C.Slade GERMAN AND FLEMISH Can God Speak in the Vernacular?; E.M.W.Pederson Thieves and Carnivals: Gender in German Dominican Literature of the Fourteenth Century; U.Wiethaus The Erosion of a Monopoly: German Religious Literature in the Fifteenth Century; W.Williams-Krapp ITALIAN Spiritual Writings between Italian Monasteries and Courts: A Devotional Book for Lucretia Borgia; G.Zarri