Looking Inward Devotional Reading and the Private Self in Late
Medieval England Jennifer Bryan "This straightforward, accessible
study will appeal to everyone interested in English literature and
culture."--"Choice" "Bryan's study brings to the subject a
commanding authorial voice and sense of detail that makes it a
lively, enjoyable read."--"Medieval Review" "You must see
yourself." The exhortation was increasingly familiar to English men
and women in the two centuries before the Reformation. They
encountered it repeatedly in their devotional books, the popular
guides to spiritual self-improvement that were reaching an
ever-growing readership at the end of the Middle Ages. But what did
it mean to see oneself? What was the nature of the self to be
envisioned, and what eyes and mirrors were needed to see and know
it properly? "Looking Inward" traces a complex network of answers
to such questions, exploring how English readers between 1350 and
1550 learned to envision, examine, and change themselves in the
mirrors of devotional literature. By all accounts, it was the most
popular literature of the period. With literacy on the rise, an
outpouring of translations and adaptations flowed across
traditional boundaries between religious and lay, and between
female and male, audiences. As forms of piety changed, as social
categories became increasingly porous, and as the heart became an
increasingly privileged and contested location, the growth of
devotional reading created a crucial arena for the making of
literate subjectivities. The models of private reading and
self-reflection constructed therein would have important
implications, not only for English spirituality, but for social,
political, and poetic identities, up to the Reformation and beyond.
In "Looking Inward," Bryan examines a wide range of devotional and
secular texts, from works by Walter Hilton, Julian of Norwich, and
Thomas Hoccleve to neglected translations like "The Chastising of
God's Children" and "The Pricking of Love." She explores the models
of identification and imitation through which they sought to reach
the inmost selves of their readers, and the scripts for spiritual
desire that they offered for the cultivation of the heart.
Illuminating the psychological paradigms at the heart of the genre,
Bryan provides fresh insights into how late medieval men and women
sought to know, labor in, and profit themselves by means of books.
Jennifer Bryan is Associate Professor of English at Oberlin
College. The Middle Ages Series 2007 280 pages 6 x 9 ISBN
978-0-8122-4048-1 Cloth $55.00s 36.00 ISBN 978-0-8122-0149-9 Ebook
$55.00s 36.00 World Rights Literature Short copy: Bryan examines a
wide range of devotional and secular texts, from works by Walter
Hilton, Julian of Norwich, and Thomas Hoccleve to explore the
models of identification and imitation through which they sought to
reach the inmost selves of their readers, and the scripts for
spiritual desire that they offered for the cultivation of the
heart.
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