The Vernacular Spirit

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.

"The important themes of vernacularity, spirituality, and gender in the later Middle Ages are explored here across a broad European canvas. The Vernacular Spirit brings together studies of English, French, German, Flemish, and Spanish religious and devotional writing; while the volume defines certain issues in common among literary traditions, each essay presents a fully historicized reading of a particular vernacular spiritual community and its emergence within the terms of its own linguistic, cultural, and political tradition. This volume will be an excellent resource for comparative perspectives on vernacular spirituality, and for an understanding of the variety of vernacular literary formations in response to the growth of lay spirituality across medieval Europe." - Rita Copeland, University of Pennsylvania

Auteur
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.

Texte du rabat

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.

Contenu
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