Personification, or prosopopeia, the rhetorical figure by which something not human is given a human identity or 'face', is readily discernible in early modern texts and images, but the figure's cognitive form and function, its rhetorical and pictorial effects, have rarely elicited sustained scholarly attention. The aim of this volume is to formulate an alternative account of personification, to demonstrate the ingenuity with which this multifaceted device was utilized by late medieval and early modern authors and artists in Italy, France, England, Scotland, and the Low Countries. Personification is susceptible to an approach that balances semiotic analysis, focusing on meaning effects, and phenomenological analysis, focusing on presence effects produced through bodily performance. This dual approach foregrounds the full scope of prosopopoeic discourse-not just the what, but also the how, not only the signified, but also the signifier.

The contributions to Discovering the Riches of the Word. Religious Reading in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe offer an innovative approach to the study of religious reading from a long term and geographically broad perspective, covering the period from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century and with a specific focus on the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries. Challenging traditional research paradigms, the contributions argue that religious reading in this "long fifteenth century" should be described in terms of continuity. They make clear that in spite of confessional divides, numerous reading practices continued to exist among medieval and early modern readers, as well as among Catholics and Protestants, and that the two groups in certain cases even shared the same religious texts. Contributors include: Elise Boillet, Sabrina Corbellini, Suzan Folkerts, Eleonore Fournie, Wim Francois, Margriet Hoogvliet, Ian Johnson, Hubert Meeus, Matti Peikola, Bart Ramakers, Elisabeth Salter, Lucy Wooding, and Federico Zuliani.

Investigations into the "realities" of staging dramatic performances, of a variety of kinds, in the middle ages. We know little about the nature of medieval performance and have generally been content to think of it in relation to more modern productions, not least because of the sparsity of existing evidence. Consequently, whilst much research has been undertaken into its contexts, there has been relatively little scholarly investigation into the conditions of perfomance itself. This book seeks to address this omission. It looks at such questions as the nature of performance in theatre/dance/puppetry/automata; the performed qualities of such events; the conventions of performed work; what took place in the act of performing; and the relationships between performers and witnesses, andwhat conditioned them. PHILIP BUTTERWORTH Is Visiting Research Fellow in the Institute for Medieval Studies at the University of Leeds, where he was formerly Reader in Medieval Theatre and Dean for Research; KATIE NORMINGTON is Senior Vice Principal (Academic) at Royal Holloway, University of London, where she is also Professor of Drama. Contributors: Kathryn Emily Dickason, Leanne Groeneveld, Max Harris, David Klausner, Femke Kramer, Jennifer Nevile, Nerida Newbigin, Tom Pettitt, Bart Ramakers, Claire Sponsler.