The Milieu and Context of the Wooing Group

The Milieu and Context of the Wooing Group
Author: Susannah M Chewning
Publisher: University of Wales Press
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2009-03-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0708322344

This book brings together the most current interpretations of the Wooing Group from scholars currently working on the fields of medieval spirituality, gender, and the anchoritic tradition, providing literary, theological, linguistic, and cultural context for the works associated with the Wooing Group (a collection of texts in English written by an unknown author in the late twelfth to early thirteenth centuries). These works are unique in their context - written almost certainly for a group of women living as anchoresses and recluses who were literate in English and were interested in guidance both in spiritual and worldly issues. The book discusses and explains the impact and significance of these works and situates them within the continuum of medieval theological and literary culture.

The Wooing of Our Lord and The Wooing Group Prayers

The Wooing of Our Lord and The Wooing Group Prayers
Author: Catherine Innes-Parker
Publisher: Broadview Press
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2015-07-22
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 1460405188

The Wooing of Our Lord and the Wooing Group prayers occupy a key position in the history of English literature and the development of English religious devotion. Dating from the second quarter of the thirteenth century, they are among a group of texts written in English at a time when the language of literature and the court was Anglo-Norman French, and the language of church and state was Latin. The text for which this group is named, The Wooing of Our Lord is also a highly skilled composition, combining beautiful and poetic expression with a profound affective theology. Its first-person female narrator speaks directly to Christ, becoming the voice of the reader whom the text guides through a passionate meditation upon the magnitude of Christ’s love, his sufferings in his Passion, and the response of the individual soul. Catherine Innes-Parker’s graceful new translation is paired with the original Middle English dialect in a facing-page format.

Middle English Devotional Compilations

Middle English Devotional Compilations
Author: Diana Denissen
Publisher: University of Wales Press
Total Pages: 159
Release: 2019-10-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1786834774

The book offers a new perspective on late medieval compiling activity. Additionally, it offers a more nuanced perspective on late medieval religious culture in England. Lastly, it examines three major, but understudied Middle English texts in depth: the Pore Caitif, The Tretyse of Love and A Talkyng of the Love of God.

The Katherine Group (MS Bodley 34)

The Katherine Group (MS Bodley 34)
Author:
Publisher: Medieval Institute Publications
Total Pages: 377
Release: 2016-10-10
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1580442498

The Katherine Group brings together for the first time newly edited and translated versions of three dynamic saints' lives, The Lives of Saints Katherine, Margaret and Juliana, a quirky but rhetorically persuasive guide to virginity, Hali Meidenhad, and a psychologically astute sermon, Sawles Warde ("The Guardianship of the Soul"). These works are important witnesses to the development of Middle English writing after the Conquest and to the rigorous anchoritic spiritual life pursued by female recluses in medieval England.

The Milieu and Context of the Wooing Group

The Milieu and Context of the Wooing Group
Author: Susannah M Chewning
Publisher: University of Wales Press
Total Pages: 342
Release: 2009-03-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1783163631

This book brings together the most current interpretations of the Wooing Group from scholars currently working on the fields of medieval spirituality, gender, and the anchoritic tradition, providing literary, theological, linguistic, and cultural context for the works associated with the Wooing Group (a collection of texts in English written by an unknown author in the late twelfth to early thirteenth centuries). These works are unique in their context – written almost certainly for a group of women living as anchoresses and recluses who were literate in English and were interested in guidance both in spiritual and worldly issues. The book discusses and explains the impact and significance of these works and situates them within the continuum of medieval theological and literary culture.

Women and Devotional Literature in the Middle Ages

Women and Devotional Literature in the Middle Ages
Author: Cate Gunn
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages: 333
Release: 2023-11-07
Genre:
ISBN: 1843846624

Essays on women and devotional literature in the Middle Ages in commemoration and celebration of the respected feminist scholar Catherine Innes-Parker. Silence was a much-lauded concept in the Middle Ages, particularly in the context of religious literature directed at women. Based on the Pauline prescription that women should neither preach nor teach, and should at all times keep speech to a minimum, the concept of silence lay at the forefront of many devotional texts, particularly those associated with various forms of women's religious enclosure. Following the example of the Virgin Mary, religious women were exhorted to speak seldom, and then only seriously and devoutly. However, as this volume shows, such gendered exhortations to silence were often more rhetorical than literal. The contributions range widely: they consider the English 'Wooing Group' texts and female-authored visionary writings from the Saxon nunnery of Helfta in the thirteenth century; works by Richard Rolle and the Dutch mystic Jan van Ruusbroec in the fourteenth century; Anglo-French treatises, and books housed in the library of the English noblewoman Cecily Neville in the fifteenth century; and the resonant poetics of women from non-Christian cultures. But all demonstrate the ways in which silence, rather than being a mere absence of speech, frequently comprised a form of gendered articulation and proto-feminist point of resistance. They thus provide an apt commemoration and celebration of the deeply innovative work of Catherine Innes-Parker (1956-2019), the respected feminist scholar and a pioneer of this important field of study.

Devotion to the Name of Jesus in Medieval English Literature, C. 1100 - C. 1530

Devotion to the Name of Jesus in Medieval English Literature, C. 1100 - C. 1530
Author: Denis Renevey
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2022-08-30
Genre: Christian life in literature
ISBN: 0192894080

Devotion to the Name of Jesus in Medieval English Literature, c. 1100 - c. 1530 offers a broad but detailed study of the practice of devotion to the Name of Jesus in late medieval England. It focuses on key texts written in Latin, Anglo-Norman, and Middle English that demonstrate the way in which devotion moved from monastic circles to a lay public in the late medieval period. It argues that devotion to the Name is a core element of Richard Rolle's contemplative practice, although devotion to the Name circulated in trilingual England at an earlier stage. The volume investigates to what extent the 1274 Second Lyon Council had an impact in the spread of the devotion in England, and beyond. It also offers illuminating evidence about how Margery Kempe and her scribes used devotion, how Eleanor Hull made it an essential component of her meditative sequence seven days of the week, and how Lady Margaret Beaufort worked towards its instigation as an official feast.

Medieval and Early Modern Religious Cultures

Medieval and Early Modern Religious Cultures
Author: Laura Ashe
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2019
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1843845296

New approaches to religious texts from the Middle Ages, highlighting their diversity and sophistication.

Anchoritism in the Middle Ages

Anchoritism in the Middle Ages
Author: Catherine Innes-Parker
Publisher: University of Wales Press
Total Pages: 286
Release: 2013-04-30
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 178316039X

This volume explores medieval anchoritism (the life of a solitary religious recluse) from a variety of perspectives. The individual essays conceive anchoritism in broadly interpretive categories: challenging perceived notions of the very concept of anchoritic ‘rule’ and guidance; studying the interaction between language and linguistic forms; addressing the connection between anchoritism and other forms of solitude (particularly in European tales of sanctity); and exploring the influence of anchoritic literature on lay devotion. As a whole, the volume illuminates the richness and fluidity of anchoritic texts and contexts and shows how anchoritism pervaded the spirituality of the Middle Ages, for lay and religious alike. It moves through both space and time, ranging from the third century to the sixteenth, from England to the Continent and back.

Mapping the Medieval City

Mapping the Medieval City
Author: Catherine A M Clarke
Publisher: University of Wales Press
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2011-05-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0708323936

This ground-breaking volume brings together contributions from scholars across a range of disciplines (including literary studies, history, geography and archaeology) to investigate questions of space, place and identity in the medieval city.