Middle English Devotional Compilations: Composing Imaginative Variations in Late Medieval England (Religion and Culture in the Middle Ages) - Hardcover

Diana Denissen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1786834766 ISBN 13: 9781786834768

Publisher: University of Wales Press, 2019

Synopsis

Middle English devotional compilations - consisting of a series of texts or extracts of texts that have intentionally been put together to constitute new and unified devotional texts - have often been approached as complex collections of source texts that need to be linked with their originals. This book argues that the study of compilations should move beyond the disentanglement of their sources. It approaches compiling as a literary activity and an active way of shaping the medieval text, with the aim to nuance scholarly discussion about compiling by putting greater emphasis on the literary instead of the technical aspects of compiling activity. In addition to describing the additions, omissions and other types of adaptations that compilers made to their source texts, Middle English Devotional Compilations highlights the nature and function of compiling activity in late medieval England, and examines three major but understudied Middle English devotional compilations in depth: The Pore Caitif, The Tretyse of Love and A Talkyng of the Love of God.

About this title

About the Author

Diana Denissen completed her PhD in Medieval English Literature at the University of Lausanne (2017), and was a project member of the Swiss National Science Foundation Project, 'Late Medieval Religiosity in England: The Evidence of Fourteenth- and Fifteenth-Century Devotional Compilations'. She is the recent recipient of a postdoctoral mobility fellowship funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Wales Press
• Publication date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1786834766
• ISBN 13: 9781786834768
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 208