The Works Of Richard Methley

Richard Methley (ca. 1450–1527/8), a Carthusian of Mount Grace, was the last great mystic before the English Reformation. Most of his prolific works are lost, but the treatises translated here display the same kind of experiential, affective, and ecstatic mysticism that is often labeled "feminine." Dating from the 1480s, they include a guide to contemplative prayer, a spiritual diary, and an unknown work on the discernment of spirits. Indebted to Richard Rolle and compared by one of his contemporaries to Margery Kempe, Methley will be an exciting discovery for students of late medieval religion.

Tekla Bude starts from a simple premise--that music requires a body to perform it--to rethink the relationship between music, matter, and the body in the late medieval period. Sonic Bodies argues that writers thought of "music" and "the body" as mutually dependent and historically determined processes that called each other into being.

Essays exploring the great religious and devotional works of the Middle Ages in their manuscript and other contexts.

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.

Focusing on England but covering a wide range of European and global traditions and influences, this authoritative volume examines the central role of medieval women in the production and circulation of books and considers their representation in medieval literary texts, as authors, readers and subjects, assessing how these change over time. Engaging with Latin, French, German, Welsh and Gaelic literary culture, it places British writing in wider European contexts while also considering more distant influences such as Arabic. Essays span topics including book production and authorship; reception; linguistic, literary, and cultural contexts and influences; women's education and spheres of knowledge; women as writers, scribes and translators; women as patrons, readers and book owners; and women as subjects. Reflecting recent trends in scholarship, the volume spans the early Middle Ages through to the eve of the Reformation and emphasises the multilingual, multicultural and international contexts of women's literary culture.

These papers are the proceedings of the fourth international Exeter Symposium. They promote enquiry into, and understanding of, the medieval mystics and the cultural context to which they belong. Here, historians, literary critics, theologians, philosophers and bibliographical scholars explore ways in which the contemplative tradition was mediated and perceived in the very early and very late medieval period, and ask fundamental questions about the nature of contemporary understanding of this subject. CONTRIBUTORS: GEORGE R. KEISER, SUE ELLEN HOLBROOK, WILLIAM F. POLLARD, JAMES HOGG, SANDRA MCENTIRE, ANNE SAVAGE, PETER DINZELBACHER, NICHOLAS WATSON, PETER MOORE, ROBERT K. FORMAN