Synopses & Reviews
Contemplative life in the middle ages has been the focus of much recent critical attention. The Symposium papers collected in this volume illuminate the mystical tradition through examination of written texts and material culture in the medieval period. A particular focus is on Celtic modes of witnessing to comtemplative vision from Ireland and Wales: an eighth-century account of voyages to wonders beyond the known world of Irish monasticism, and the work of Christian bards in medieval Wales. Distinctions within the mystical tradition in England are also explored both within differing Religious Orders and bewtween individuals engaged with the contemplative life. Dr MARION GLASSCOE teaches in the School of English and American Studies at the University of Exeter.Contributors: THOMAS O'LOUGHLIN, OLIVER DAVIES, R. IESTYN DANIEL, RUTH SMITH, VALERIE EDDEN, DENISE N. BAKER, DENIS RENEVEY, E.A. JONES, RICHARD LAWES, NAOE KUKITA YOSHIKAWA, C. ANNETTE GRISE, JAMES HOGG
Synopsis
Interdisciplinary studies on medieval mystics and their cultural background.
Contemplative life in the middle ages has been the focus of much recent critical attention. The Symposium papers collected in this volume illuminate the mystical tradition through examination of written texts and material culturein the medieval period. A particular focus is on Celtic modes of witnessing to comtemplative vision from Ireland and Wales: an eighth-century account of voyages to wonders beyond the known world of Irish monasticism, and the workof Christian bards in medieval Wales. Distinctions within the mystical tradition in England are also explored both within differing Religious Orders and bewtween individuals engaged with the contemplative life.
Dr MARION GLASSCOE teaches in the School of English and American Studies at the University of Exeter.
Contributors: THOMAS O'LOUGHLIN, OLIVER DAVIES, R. IESTYN DANIEL, RUTH SMITH, VALERIE EDDEN, DENISE N. BAKER, DENIS RENEVEY, E.A. JONES, RICHARD LAWES, NAOE KUKITA YOSHIKAWA, C. ANNETTE GRISE, JAMES HOGG
Synopsis
The contemplative life in the middle ages has been the focus of much recent critical attention. The papers collected in this volume provide an illumination of the mystical tradition, through both examination of the written texts (literary, philosophical, theological, historical) and the material culture of the medieval period throughout the British Isles. Topics include the topography of holiness in The Voyage of St. Brendan; Carmelite spirituality, in the fourteenth century; the madness of Margery Kempe; female religious readers; and Welsh mysticism.
Table of Contents
Distant islands : the topography of holiness in the Nauigatio Sancti Brendani /Thomas O'Loughlin --Rhetoric of the gift : inspiration, pneumatology and poetic craft in medieval Wales /Oliver Davies --Medieval mysticism : an example from Wales /R. Iestyn Daniel --Cistertian and Victorine approaches to contemplation : understandings of self in A rule of life for a recluse and The twelve patriarchs /Ruth Smith --The mantle of Elijah : Carmelite spirituality in England in the fourteenth century /Valerie Edden --The active and contemplative lives in Rolle, the Cloud-Author and Hilton /Denise N. Baker --Name above names : the devotion to the name of Jesus from Richard Rolle to Walter Hilton's Scale of perfection I /Denis Renevey --A new look into the Speculum inclusorum /E.A. Jones --The madness of Margery Kempe /Richard Lawes --The role of the Virgin Mary and the structure of meditation in the Book of Margery Kempe /Naoèe Kutika Yoshikawa --'In the Blessid Vyneyerd of Oure Holy Saueor' : female religious readers and textual reception in the Myroure of Oure Ladte and the Orcherd of Syon /C. Annette Grise --Adam Easton's Defensorium Sanctae Birgittae /James Gogg --Dial m for mystic : mystical texts in the library of Syon Abbey and the spiirituality of the Syon Brethren /Vincent Gillespie.