Miserere Mei: The Penitential Psalms in Late Medieval and Early Modern England

Acknowledgments

xvii Acknowledgments I could not have completed this study without the generous support of my home institution, the University of Connecticut. I am especially grateful to the University of Connecticut English Department for grant­ ing me a semester of research leave in the fall of 2009. This time away from my teaching and advising duties gave me a crucial oppor­ tunity to reinvigorate my project by looking afresh at the Penitential Psalms. Before that, a Junior Faculty Fellowship from the University of Connecticut Research Foundation, in the summer of 2007, allowed me to indulge in three months of reading nothing but Luther. I would have accomplished very little writing had it not been for the provision of­ carrel space in the Homer Babbidge Library on campus. Further material aid came from outside the university, in the form of a Northeast MLA Summer Research Fellowship, which funded a necessary trip to the United Kingdom in July 2010. My research for this book benefited enormously from the assistance of many librarians, archivists, curators, imaging technicians, and permissions staff—on both sides of the Atlantic. I would like in particular to thank Lynne Farrington, John Pollack, and Daniel Traister (Rare Book and Manuscript Library,University of Pennsylvania); Richard Bleiler (Homer Babbidge Library, University of Connecticut); Steven K. Galbraith and Rebecca Oviedo (Folger Shakespeare Library); Joanne Kennedy, Joël Sartorius, and Joseph Shemtov (the Free Library xviii Acknowledgments of Philadelphia); Cornelia S. King (the Library Company, Philadelphia ); Don C. Skemer (Princeton University Library); Colum P. Hourihane (Index of Christian Art, Princeton University); Jaclyn Penny (American Antiquarian Society); Nicholas Smith and Don Manning (Cambridge University Library); Gabriel Sewell and Clare Brown (Lambeth Palace Library); Justin Clegg (the British Library); and Phillipa Grimstone (Pepys Library, Magdalene College, Cambridge). An earlier version of chapter 1 appeared in Renaissance Quarterly, and a portion of chapter 3 was published in Psalms in the Early Modern World. I am grateful to the Renaissance Society of America and the University of Chicago Press on the one hand, and Ashgate on the other hand, for permission to reproduce my work here in revised form. Full copyright information is given in my notes to the relevant chapters. My interest in the Penitential Psalms first took seed when I was a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, and I owe thanks to my advisors—Peter Stallybrass, Margreta de Grazia, and David­ Wallace—not only for allowing me to follow up on my hunch that there might be something worth investigating (and writing about) in this esoteric topic, but also for helping me to understand the wider significance of my discoveries as they occurred. Though each member of my advisory committee had a profound impact on my growth as a scholar, Peter Stallybrass deserves special mention for directing me to important archives, as well as for demystifying the often peculiar practices of knowledge production in our field. At Penn,I also received helpful suggestions from Professors E. Ann Matter, David M. Stern, and Margo Todd. In addition, I count myself highly fortunate to have been able to participate in the university’s “med-Ren”seminar—an experience that taught me to reexamine everything I thought I knew about medieval and early modern literature and culture. Lively conversations with my peers (including Jessica A. Boon, Jane Hwang Degenhardt,Marissa Greenberg,Miriam Jacobson,Stephanie A.V. G. Kamath, Michelle Karnes, Erika Lin, and Elizabeth Williamson ) were formative, and I have recalled them often while working on the Penitential Psalms. Many other minds must be thanked for their involvement in this book. Christel McNeill (a long time ago now) and Michaela Lowrie (more recently) both helped me to decipher Luther’s German, while Acknowledgments xix Erica Gelser checked my first set of transcriptions from the near-­ impenetrable “Weimarer Ausgabe” (Weimar edition). Emily Greenwood answered a relentless onslaught of questions about Latin and Greek from afar. I am also grateful to Ty Buckman, Hannibal Hamlin, Scott C. Lucas, Anne Lake Prescott, Frederic Clarke Putnam, Beth Quitslund, Michael D. Reeve, and Nigel Smith for sharing their expertise along the way (and setting me straight where necessary, too). At the University of Connecticut, I have received sage counsel from my colleagues C. David Benson, Frederick M. Biggs, Wayne Franklin, F. Elizabeth Hart, Robert J. Hasenfratz, Brendan Kane, Gregory M. Colón Semenza, and Kathleen A.Tonry. It was Jennifer Summit who first informed me about the ReFormations series. The series editors—David Aers, Sarah Beckwith, and James Simpson—encouraged me...