New approaches to religious texts from the Middle Ages, highlighting their diversity and sophistication. From the great age of pastoral expansion in the thirteenth century, to the revolutionary paroxysms of the English Reformation, England's religious writings, cultures, and practices defy easy analysis. The diverse currents of practice and belief which interact and conflict across the period - orthodox and heterodox, popular and learned, mystical and pragmatic, conservative and reforming - are defined on the one hand by differences as nuanced as the apophatic and cataphatic approaches to understanding the divine, and on the other by developments as profound and concrete as the persecution of declared heretics, the banning and destruction of books, and the emergence of printing. The essays presented in this volume respond to and build upon the hugely influential work of Vincent Gillespie in these fields, offering a variety of approaches, spiritual and literary, bibliographical and critical, across the Middle Ages to the Protestant Reformation and beyond. Topics addressed include the Wycliffite Bible; the Assumption of the Virgin as represented in medieval English culture; Nicholas Love and Reginald Pecock; and the survival of latemedieval piety in early modern England. LAURA ASHE is Professor of English Literature and Tutorial Fellow, Worcester College, Oxford; RALPH HANNA is Professor of Palaeography (emeritus), Keble College, Oxford. Contributors: Tamara Atkin, James Carley, Alexandra da Costa, Anne Hudson, Ian Johnson, Daniel Orton, Susan Powell, Denis Renevey, Michael G. Sargent, Annie Sutherland, Nicholas Watson, Barry Windeatt.

A collection attesting to the richness and lasting appeal of these short forms of Middle English verse. The body of short Middle English poems conventionally known as lyrics is characterized by wonderful variety. Taking many different forms, and covering an enormous number of subjects, these poems have proved at once attractive andchallenging for modern readers and scholars. This collection of essays explores a range of Middle English lyrics from the thirteenth to the early sixteenth century, both religious and secular in flavour. It directs attention to the intrinsic qualities of these short poems and at the same time explores their capacity to illuminate important aspects of medieval cultural practice and production: forms of piety, contemporary conditions and events, the historyof feelings and emotions, and the relationships of image, song, performance and speech to the written word. The issues covered in the essays include editing lyrics; lyric manuscripts; affect; visuality; mouvance and transformation; and the relationships between words, music and speech. A particularly distinctive feature of the collection is that most of the essays take as a point of departure a specific lyric whose particularities are explored within wider-ranging critical argument. JULIA BOFFEY is Professor of Medieval Studies in the Department of English at Queen Mary University of London; CHRISTIANIA WHITEHEAD is Professor of Middle English Literature at the University of Warwick. Contributors: Anne Baden-Daintree, Julia Boffey, Anne Marie D'Arcy, Thomas G. Duncan, Susanna Fein, Mary C. Flannery, Jane Griffiths, Joel Grossman, John C. Hirsh, Hetta Elizabeth Howes, Natalie Jones, Michael P. Kuczynski, A.S. Lazikani, Daniel McCann, Denis Renevey, Elizabeth Robertson, Annie Sutherland, Mary Wellesley, Christiania Whitehead, Katherine Zieman.

A collection attesting to the richness and lasting appeal of these short forms of Middle English verse. The body of short Middle English poems conventionally known as lyrics is characterized by wonderful variety. Taking many different forms, and covering an enormous number of subjects, these poems have proved at once attractive andchallenging for modern readers and scholars. This collection of essays explores a range of Middle English lyrics from the thirteenth to the early sixteenth century, both religious and secular in flavour. It directs attention to the intrinsic qualities of these short poems and at the same time explores their capacity to illuminate important aspects of medieval cultural practice and production: forms of piety, contemporary conditions and events, the historyof feelings and emotions, and the relationships of image, song, performance and speech to the written word. The issues covered in the essays include editing lyrics; lyric manuscripts; affect; visuality; mouvance and transformation; and the relationships between words, music and speech. A particularly distinctive feature of the collection is that most of the essays take as a point of departure a specific lyric whose particularities are explored within wider-ranging critical argument.

Essays investigating the question of time, and how it was perceived, both in philosophical/religious terms, and in reality. How was time experienced in the Middle Ages? What attitudes informed people's awareness of its passing - especially when tensions between eternity and human time shaped perceptions in profound and often unexpected ways? Is it a human universal or culturally specific - or both? The essays here offer a range of perspectives on and approaches to personal, artistic, literary, ecclesiastical and visionary responses to time during this period. They cover a wide and diverse variety of material, from historical prose to lyrical verse, and from liturgical and visionary writing to textiles and images, both real and imagined, across the literary and devotional cultures of England, Italy, Germany and Russia. From anxieties about misspent time to moments of pure joy in the here and now, from concerns about worldly affairs to experiences of being freed from the trappings of time, the volume demonstrates how medieval cultures and societies engaged with and reflected on their own temporalities.

One of the most important medieval writers studied in historical and literary context. Julian of Norwich, the fourteenth/early fifteenth-century anchoress and mystic, is one of the most important and best-known figures of the Middle Ages. Her Revelations, intense visions of the divine, have been widely studied and read; the first known writings of an English woman, their influence extends over theology and literature. However, many aspects of both her life and thought remain enigmatic. This exciting new collection offers a comprehensive, accessible coverage of the key aspects of debate surrounding Julian. It places the author within a wide range of contemporary literary, social, historical and religious contexts, and also provides a wealth of new insightsinto manuscript traditions, perspectives on her writing and ways of interpreting it, building on the work of many of the most active and influential researchers within Julian studies, and including the fruits of the most recent,ground-breaking findings. It will therefore be a vital companion for all of Julian's readers in the twenty-first century. Dr Liz Herbert McAvoy is Senior Lecturer in Gender in English and Medieval Studies at Swansea University. Contributors: Denise M. Baker, Alexandra Barratt, Marleen Cre, Elisabeth Dutton,Vincent Gillespie, Cate Gunn, Ena Jenkins, E.A. Jones, Liz Herbert McAvoy, Laura Saetveit Miles, Kim M. Philips, Elizabeth Robertson,Sarah Salih, Annie Sutherland, Diane Watt, Barry Windeatt.

English Psalms in the Middle Ages, 1300-1450 explores vernacular translation, adaptation, and paraphrase of the biblical psalms. Focussing on a wide and varied body of texts, it examines translations of the complete psalter as well as renditions of individual psalms and groups of psalms. Exploring who translated the psalms, and how and why they were translated, it also considers who read these texts and how and why they were read. Annie Sutherland foregrounds the centrality of the voice of David in the devotional landscape of the period, suggesting that the psalmist offered the prayerful, penitent Christian a uniquely articulate and emotive model of utterance before God. Examining the evidence of contemporary wills and testaments as well as manuscripts containing the translations, she highlights the popularity of the psalms among lay and religious readers, considering how, when, and by whom the translated psalms were used as well as thinking about who translated them and how and why they were translated. In investigating these and other areas, English Psalms in the Middle Ages, 1300-1450 raises questions about interactions between Latinity and vernacularity in the late Middle Ages and situates the translated psalms in a literary and theoretical context.

An examination of how The Book of Psalms shaped medieval thought and helped develop the medieval English literary canon. The Book of Psalms had a profound impact on English literature from the Anglo-Saxon to the late medieval period. This collection examines the various ways in which they shaped medieval English thought and contributed to the emergence of an English literary canon. It brings into dialogue experts on both Old and Middle English literature, thus breaking down the traditional disciplinary binaries of both pre- and post-Conquest English and late medieval and Early Modern, as well as emphasizing the complex and fascinating relationship between Latin and the vernacular languages of England. Its three main themes, translation, adaptation and voice, enable a rich variety of perspectives on the Psalms and medieval English literature to emerge. TAMARA ATKIN is Senior Lecturer in Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Literature at Queen Mary University of London; FRANCIS LENEGHAN is Associate Professor of OldEnglish at The University of Oxford and a Fellow of St Cross College, Oxford Contributors: Daniel Anlezark, Mark Faulkner, Vincent Gillespie, Michael P. Kuczynski, David Lawton, Francis Leneghan, Jane Roberts, Mike Rodman Jones, Elizabeth Solopova, Lynn Staley, Annie Sutherland, Jane Toswell, Katherine Zieman.