Late Medieval Devotional Compilations in England ed. by Marleen Cré et al. (review)

This anthology discusses minor religious texts that have long been the wallflowers of medieval English literature: here they hold the floor. Part I offers Vincent Gillespie on the Speculum Christiani, Ralph Hanna on The Three Arrows on Doomsday, Ian Johnson on biblical texts as 'heterarchic' (randomly structured compilations), Annie Sutherland on A Talkyng of the Love of God, and Margaret Connolly on early readers of the Pore Caitif and the Contemplations of the Dread and Love of God.

Part II addresses manuscript transmission: Diana Denissen on the Pore Caitif and the Contemplations again, Sarah Macmillan on the ascetic treatises Life of Soul and Book of Tribulation, and Marleen Cré on four abbreviated and anomalous texts in Cambridge, University Library, MS Ii.6.40.

Part III relates compilation to devotional practice: Mami Kanno on an unusual, female-oriented, version of the South English Legendaries in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 779, Nicole R. Rice on 'small-l lollard' (p. 449) versions in London, British Library, Additional MS 30897, of the Pore Caitif (again) and Book to a Mother, Sheri Smith on self-examination and confession in the Cistercian monk John Northewode's trilingual miscellany, and Brandon Alakas on the Brigittine Richard Whitford's final publication, Dyuers Holy Instrucyons (1541), as hints on survival for recusants.

Part IV discusses mystical texts in compilations. Denis Renevey examines Richard Rolle's devotion to the Holy Name and his influence (acknowledged and unacknowledged) on The Chastising of God's Children and Disce mori, Michael Sargent writes on the uses of 'affection', 'devotion', and 'feeling' in Walter Hilton's The Scale of Perfection, and that text's incorporation into compilations, and Naöe Kukita Yoshokawa studies the reworking of Mechtild's mystical revelations as collections of prayers in London, British Library, Harley MS 494.

In the last section, Laura Saetveit Miles focuses on a fifteenth-century multivocal miscellany, Cambridge, Trinity College, MS B.15.42, containing a neglected Marian text, Meditaciones domini nostri, and on the Contemplations (again); Anne Mouron on a short, illustrated poem, the (probably) Carthusian Desert of Religion; and A. S. Lazikani rereads The Chastising and its search for the absent/present bridegroom alongside three medieval wall paintings. The editors provide a deft summary of the contents in their introduction, and Nicholas Watson concludes by reconsidering the meanings of compilatio(n).