The Call to Read: Reginald Pecock's Books and Textual Communities - Softcover

Campbell, Kirsty

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0268023069 ISBN 13: 9780268023065

Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010

Synopsis

The Call to Read is the first full-length study to situate the surviving oeuvre of Reginald Pecock in the context of current scholarship on English vernacular theology of the late medieval period. Kirsty Campbell examines the important and innovative contribution Pecock made to late medieval debates about the roles of the Bible, the Church, the faculty of reason, and practices of devotion in fostering a vital, productive, and stable Christian community.

Campbell argues that Pecock's fascinating attempt to educate the laity is more than an effort to supply religious reading material: it is an attempt to establish and unite a community of readers around his books, to influence and thus change the ways they understand their faith, the world, and their place in it. The aim of Pecock's educational project is to harness the power of texts to effect religious change. Combining traditional approaches with innovative thinking on moral philosophy, devotional exercises, and theological doctrine, Pecock's works of religious instruction are his attempt to reform a Christian community threatened by heresy through reshaping meaningful Christian practices and forms of belief. Campbell's book will be of interest to scholars and students of medieval literature and culture, especially those interested in fifteenth-century religious history and culture.

About this title

About the Author

Kirsty Campbell is professor of English at John Abbott College in Montreal, Canada.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0268023069
• ISBN 13: 9780268023065
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 324