Middle English Religious Writing in Practice: Texts, Readers, and Transformations ed. by Nicole Rice (review)

The essays in Middle English Religious Writing in Practice: Texts, Readers, and Transformation are based on the premise that texts are not stable things, and are, in fact, inherently unstable and variable. As one of the contributors to this collection puts it: “One of the most exciting or annoying aspects of books, depending on one’s perspective, is their mobility: once written, they have lives of their own and their circulation is largely uncontrollable …” (239). The essays in this volume are concerned specifically with religious texts, and how these texts and their readers responded to cultural changes, how older works were encountered by new—and sometimes surprising—readers, and how these new readers sometimes altered older works to suit their own purposes. Rice’s introduction claims that “several of the essays will add significantly to the growing picture of the fifteenth century as a period of continued, though perhaps differently expressed, ‘theological aspirations’ in the vernacular” (5). After reading the essays, it is clear to see that this is no idle boast; the quality of the individual contributions is generally very high, and the sheer breadth of texts and topics covered is evidence of the vitality and depth of vernacular religious writing in the later Middle Ages.

Middle English Religious Writing in Practice is also noteworthy for its discussion of texts that have been neglected in favor of “canonical” works. One will not find here a rehash of Dante or Langland. Instead, these essays offer lively and informative discussions that illustrate how lesser-known texts can broaden and deepen our understanding of late medieval devotion. As a whole, the volume yields numerous new insights into how religious literature was produced, used, and read; the essays’ authors extend these findings to reflect on what they suggest about some of the more obscure aspects of lay piety and affective religious experience.

The collection consists of eight essays organized into three sections, bookended by an introduction and two extensive indices (an index of manuscripts and a general index). The first section deals with writings about and by continental women and how these were received in England. The second deals with the compilation of religious manuscripts in the later medieval period. The third deals with questions of orthodoxy, heresy, and popular devotion in relation to the revision, annotation, and circulation of texts.

Like any such collection, synthesis across the essays is not always achieved, though one does engage the arguments of others (see 219). Otherwise, each is written in such a way that it can be read independently of the collection as a whole. On the one hand, this leads to some repetition among the different essays, most notably those that deal with the same texts (as with Margaret Connolly and Moira Fitzgibbons on Pore Caitif), but on the other hand, this increases the volume’s utility, as individual essays on an array of topics can be consulted easily without reference to any of the others.

I am only able to engage a few of these essays in any depth here, and my selection should not be taken as a judgment on the quality of those not addressed. Rather, I will discuss some things that struck me while reading the essays, and I would encourage others to read the collection for themselves, as just about anyone will find something of interest in it.

Martha Driver’s “Poetry as Prayer: John Audelay’s ‘Salutation to St. Bridget’” looks at the poet’s use of repetition in salutation poems, which form a type of verse prayer in a meditative mode. Repetition of a word or phrase was a popular form of meditative prayer, one that Audelay used to great effect, and one that he drew from the liturgical tradition of the Church (specifically the antiphon). While the literary value of such verse prayer might be called into question (see 91), there can be little doubt about...