This volume gathers the contributions of senior and junior scholars--all indebted to the pathbreaking work of Derek Pearsall--to showcase new research prompted by his rich and ongoing legacy as a literary critic, editor, and seminal founder of Middle English manuscript studies. The contributors aim both to honor Pearsall's work in the field he established and to introduce the complexities of interdisciplinary manuscript studies to students already familiar with medieval literature. The contributors explore a range of issues, from the study of medieval literary manuscripts to the history of medieval books, libraries, literacy, censorship, and the social classes who used the books and manuscripts--nobles, children, schoolmasters, priests, merchants, and more. In addressing reading practices, essays provide a wealth of information on marginal commentaries, images and interpretive methods, international transmission, and early print and editorial methods.
""New Directions in Medieval Manuscript Studies and Reading Practices" marks the heritage of the distinguished scholar Derek Pearsall while highlighting his continuing influence on medieval manuscript studies. Buoyed by fine work of senior scholars, the collection also introduces readers to stimulating work by an upcoming generation of more recent practitioners, all of whom address crucial issues in the field: the particulars of individual manuscripts, including scribal practice, marginal commentary, and audience reception. The result is a fine collection at once canonical in some respects and innovative in others." --Paul H. Strohm, Anna S. Garbedian Professor Emeritus of the Humanities, Columbia University

Centering on the difficult and important subject of medieval rape culture, this book brings Middle English and Scots texts into conversation with contemporary discourses on sexual assault and the #MeToo movement. The book explores the topic in the late medieval lyric genre known as the pastourelle and in related literary works, including chivalric romance, devotional lyric, saints' lives, and the works of major authors such as Margery Kempe and William Dunbar. By engaging issues that are important to feminist activism today-the gray areas of sexual consent, the enduring myth of false rape allegations, and the emancipatory potential of writing about survival-this volume demonstrates how the radical terms of the pastourelle might reshape our own thinking about consent, agency, and survivors' speech and help uncover cultural scripts for talking about sexual violence today. In addition to embodying the possibilities of medievalist feminist criticism after #MeToo, Rape Culture and Female Resistance in Late Medieval Literature includes an edition of sixteen Middle English and Middle Scots pastourelles. The poems are presented in a critical framework specifically tailored to the undergraduate classroom. Along with the editors, the contributors to this volume include Lucy M. Allen-Goss, Suzanne M. Edwards, Mary C. Flannery, Katharine W. Jager, Scott David Miller, Elizabeth Robertson, Courtney E. Rydel, and Amy N. Vines.