Relevant bibliographies by topics / Medieval English religion

Contents

  1. Journal articles
  2. Dissertations / Theses
  3. Books
  4. Book chapters

Academic literature on the topic 'Medieval English religion'

Author: Grafiati
Published: 4 June 2021
Last updated: 13 February 2022

Create a spot-on reference in APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, and other styles

Select a source type:

Consult the lists of relevant articles, books, theses, conference reports, and other scholarly sources on the topic 'Medieval English religion.'

Next to every source in the list of references, there is an 'Add to bibliography' button. Press on it, and we will generate automatically the bibliographic reference to the chosen work in the citation style you need: APA, MLA, Harvard, Chicago, Vancouver, etc.

You can also download the full text of the academic publication as pdf and read online its abstract whenever available in the metadata.

Journal articles on the topic "Medieval English religion"

1

Biller, Peter. "Words and the Medieval Notion of ‘Religion’." Journal of Ecclesiastical History 36, no. 3 (July 1985): 351–69. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0022046900041142.

Full text
Abstract:
In recent years some of the most interesting statements about medieval Christianity have come not from medieval but early modern historians, Jean Delumeau, Keith Thomas, John Bossy and others, in the broad descriptive accounts which form the backcloth to discussions of reformation or counter-reformation developments in ‘religion’ – provocative statements which have not, however, evoked a large response from the English world of medieval scholarship. The latest of such statements is contained in an article by John Bossy. In part of this Bossy puts forward contentions and arguments which are of considerable importance for the study of medieval Christianity. If his arguments and the evidence he advances in their support were to be accepted the historian of medieval Christianity would be pressed to reconsider the words and concepts he deploys in his definition, descriptions and explanations of his subject. Even if modified or rejected they are acute and fruitful points, and their examination may sharpen understanding of medieval thought about religion. Bossy's arguments also point to a gap in modern scholarship: a general account of one area (assuming it was an area) of thought – the development of medieval description, classification and explanation of ‘religious’ phenomena.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
2

Watkin, Thomas Glyn. "The Foundations of Medieval English Ecclesiastical History: Studies Presented to David Smith." Ecclesiastical Law Journal 9, no. 2 (April 11, 2007): 227–29. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0956618x07000476.

Full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
3

Bray, Dorothy. "Medieval Literature at McGill." Florilegium 20, no. 1 (January 2003): 114–15. http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/flor.20.033.

Full text
Abstract:
The Department of English at McGill University has recently lost two of its medievalists, one to early retirement and one to another institution (a decision made largely for personal reasons), and for several years has had no specialist in medieval drama. The Department now has only two full-time medievalists, with the result that its offerings in medieval literature have fallen off somewhat. A few years ago, the Department also made the effort to change all its courses to 3-credits. The 6-credit introductory course in Old English thereby fell away, as did student interest. However, we have managed to keep an Old English course going at the upper level, and a new, 300-level, 3-credit Introduction to Old English is being offered next year, in the hopes of being able to offer both the introductory course in Old English and the upper-level course as a follow-up. The Department over the past few years has maintained its offerings in Chaucer, as well as in other medieval topics (gender, religion, folklore, Arthurian tradition, and literary theory); this year we were able to put on Chaucer at both the undergraduate and graduate level, an Old English undergraduate course, and two upper-level undergraduate courses in Middle English literature (on allegory and on romance). We have approval to advertise for a position in Late Medieval/Early Renaissance, which we hope we will be able to fill next year. The Department now has a very strong Renaissance studies component (especially in Shakespeare), and we are hoping to boost our medieval offerings by creating a bridge with the Renaissance.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
4

McLeish, Tom. "Before Science and Religion: Learning from Medieval Physics." Modern Believing 62, no. 2 (April 1, 2021): 124–35. http://dx.doi.org/10.3828/mb.2021.9.

Full text
Abstract:
Scientists today are surprised when confronted by the sophistication of natural philosophy of the thirteenth century. Although clearly of a former age and holding very different perceptions of material structure, its mathematical and imaginative exploration of nature is striking. It also finds a natural theological and contemplative framing; because of this it can work as a resource for contemporary projects constructing ‘theology of science’ and constructing different approaches to the relation of science and religion. Taking the work of the English polymath Robert Grosseteste from the 1220s as an example, I exemplify these claims in more detail through three aspects of medieval physics: 1) a teleological narrative for science; 2) a fresh apprehension of scientific imagination; and 3) a christological and incarnational metaphysics.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
5

SWANSON, R. N. "Indulgences for Prayers for the Dead in the Diocese of Lincoln in the Early Fourteenth Century." Journal of Ecclesiastical History 52, no. 2 (April 2001): 197–219. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0022046901005905.

Full text
Abstract:
The role of indulgences in pre-Reformation English religion remains incompletely studied. Centred on material contained in the Lincoln episcopal registers dating from c. 1290 to c. 1340, granting indulgences for prayers for the souls of named people and often specifying their burial locations, this article argues that their place in medieval spirituality and charitable activity has been under- appreciated. Examining the mechanisms and implications of the Lincoln records, it suggests that under-recording of actions considered normal and routine, rather than lack of popularity, lies behind the failure to give indulgences their due place in assessment of English medieval religious life.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
6

French, Katherine L. "Valerie G. Spear, Leadership in Medieval English Nunneries. Studies in the History of Medieval Religion series. Boydell, 2005." Medieval Feminist Forum 43, no. 1 (June 2007): 143–45. http://dx.doi.org/10.17077/1536-8742.1037.

Full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
7

Haigh, Christopher. "Revisionism, the Reformation and the History of English Catholicism." Journal of Ecclesiastical History 36, no. 3 (July 1985): 394–406. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0022046900041166.

Full text
Abstract:
Twenty years ago, when Patrick McGrath was writing Papists and Puritans, it made sense to present the history of Tudor Catholicism in terms of early decline and later heroic recovery. Our understanding of the sixteenth century was then dominated by two books, which seemed to demonstrate revolutions in religion and government that breached all continuities in ecclesiastical and political history. In A. G. Dickens's The English Reformation, an increasingly sophisticated laity, discontented with the moral laxity and spiritual torpor of the late medieval clergy, was shown to have accepted with enthusiasm the break with Rome and the new doctrines of Protestantism. Gentlemen, lawyers, merchants and artisans responded to the energetic evangelism of the early reformers, and abandoned medieval obscurantism. Secular and ecclesiastical politicians espoused reform for their own calculations of expediency or experience of spirituality, and threw the weight of the state behind the new doctrines, while conservatives lacked the commitment and imagination to resist change.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
8

Duffy, Eamon. "A. G. Dickens and the late medieval Church." Historical Research 77, no. 195 (February 1, 2004): 98–110. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2281.2004.00200.x.

Full text
Abstract:
Abstract In this article A. G. Dickens's writings about late medieval religion are located in the context of early twentieth-century English historiography, in particular the controversies between Cardinal Aidan Gasquet and Dr. G. G. Coulton. The article argues that despite his desire for judicious objectivity, and despite also his innovatory use of hitherto neglected types of archival material, Dickens's essentially negative assessment of the state of the late medieval Church was shaped by his own early religious formation, and by a Protestant/whig outlook which he shared with Coulton. As a consequence, he understood some mainstream Tudor religious emphases and convictions as ‘medieval’, by which he meant backward-looking minority concerns.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
9

Zare Behtash, Esmail, Seyyed Morteza Hashemi Toroujeni, and Farzane Safarzade Samani. "An Introduction to the Medieval English: The Historical and Literary Context, Traces of Church and Philosophical Movements in the Literature." Advances in Language and Literary Studies 8, no. 1 (February 1, 2017): 143. http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.alls.v.8n.1p.143.

Full text
Abstract:
The Transition from Greek to medieval philosophy that speculated on religion, nature, metaphysics, human being and society was rather a rough transition in the history of English literature. Although the literature content of this age reflected more religious beliefs, the love and hate relationship of medieval philosophy that was mostly based on the Christianity with Greek civilization was exhibited clearly. The modern philosophical ideologies are the continuation of this period’s ideologies. Without a well understanding of the philosophical issues related to this age, it is not possible to understand the modern ones well. The catholic tradition as well as the religious reform against church called Protestantism was organized in this age. In Medieval Period, philosophy and theoretical thoughts related to the Christianity were well-organized and the philosophy, science and theoretical thoughts served religion. Philosophy had different forms and orientations in various stages of this period. One of these philosophical thoughts was the Augustinian philosophy which was strongly in favor of church with its different practices and styles. It used Platonic and Neo-Platonic traditions to prove that faith is the result of divine dispensations, not the result of human will power and wisdom. On the other hand, according to Aquinas, we experience different types of the effects that existed in the world around us. He believed that we assign an effective cause to each effect we experienced around us. Additionally, he claimed that reasoning was the only way to reach the real faith. In fact, philosophy of Medieval Period attempted to prove that religious assertions and ideologists were in search of matching their philosophical beliefs with the beliefs of Christianity. Christianity as the dominant factor in Middle English Literature helped English to be stablished as a literary language.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
10

Molnar, Attila. "The construction of the notion of religion in early modern Europe." Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 14, no. 1 (2002): 47–60. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/157006802760198767.

Full text
Abstract:
AbstractThis article traces the construction and use of the notion of "religion" in early modern Europe. The argument is that the concept of "religion" evolved from the medieval ideas of universitas fidelium and conscientia. A look at the writings of Machiavelli and Bodin, as well as the ideas of the English Latitudinarians, reveals that they used the word without reference to theological content and with indifference to theological differences, but, instead, to convey ideas of a common morality for the building of a civil society and a functional statehood.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
More sources

Dissertations / Theses on the topic "Medieval English religion"

1

Malo, Roberta. "Saints' relics in medieval English literature." Columbus, Ohio : Ohio State University, 2007. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc%5Fnum=osu1186329116.

Full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
2

Hall, Alaric T. P. "The meanings of elf and elves in medieval England." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2004. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/4924/.

Full text
Abstract:
This thesis investigates the character and role of non-Christian belief in medieval societies, and how we can reconstruct it using written sources. It focuses on Anglo-Saxon culture, contextualising Anglo-Saxon material with analyses of Middle English, Older Scots, Scandinavian and Irish texts. We lack Anglo-Saxon narratives about elves (ælfe, singular ælf), but the word ælf itself is well-attested in Old English texts. By analysing these attestations, it is possible to discover much about the meanings of the word ælf— from which, I argue, it is possible to infer what ælfe were believed to be and to do, and how these beliefs changed over time. Using methodologies inspired by linguistic anthropology (discussed in Chapter 1), I develop these analyses to reconstruct the changing significances of non-Christian beliefs in medieval English-speaking societies, affording new perspectives on Christianisation, health and healing, and group identity, particularly gendering. The body of the thesis, chapters 2–9, is in three parts. Because of its historiographical prominence in discussions of Anglo-Saxon non-Christian beliefs, I begin in Chapter 2 by reassessing Scandinavian comparative evidence for elf-beliefs. I also show that it is possible to correlate the meanings of Old Norse words for supernatural beings with other Scandinavian mythological sources for world-views, providing a case-study supporting similar approaches to Anglo-Saxon evidence. Chapters 3–6 reassess Anglo-Saxon linguistic and textual evidence, tackling in turn prehistoric naming patterns and morphological developments, poetry, glosses, and medical texts. The long-standing assumption that ælfe were incorporeal, small and arrowshooting proves to be both unfounded and implausible. Traditionally, ælfe were conceptually similar both to gods and to human ethnic others, all of whom were opposed to monsters in Anglo-Saxon world-views. They were probably only male. In textual evidence, ælfe are paradigmatic examples of dangerously seductive beauty and they are possible causes of prophetic speech and certain kinds of ailments. They inflicted ailments at least at times by a variety of magic called siden, cognate with the much-discussed medieval Scandinavian magic seiðr. Both of these points associate ælfe with femininegendered traits, and I show that by the eleventh century, ælf could also denote otherworldly, nymph-like females. These otherworldly females seem to have been new arrivals in Anglo-Saxon belief-systems. Demonisation is clearly attested from around 800, but ælfe were not conflated with demons in all or even most discourses, even after the Old English period. Chapters 7–9 develop this core evidence to argue for the cultural significance of the beliefs it reveals. By adducing comparative texts from medieval Ireland and Scandinavia and from the early modern Scottish witchcraft trials, Chapter 7 shows how the characteristics of ælf in Old English could occur together in coherent, ideologically significant narratives. Chapter 8 considers the Old English charm Wið færstice in a similar comparative context, focusing on the trial of Issobel Gowdie for witchcraft in 1662, and considering the importance of elf-beliefs in Anglo-Saxon healing. These chapters emphasise cultural continuity in North West European beliefs, questioning inherited scholarly constructions of fairy-beliefs as distinctively ‘Celtic’, and showing striking continuities between Anglo-Saxon and early modern Scottish beliefs. Chapter 9 concludes by combining earlier findings to make new assessments of Anglo-Saxon Christianisation and constructions of group identity, danger and power, and gendering. I examine gender in particular, combining evidence from throughout the thesis with comparative textual and archaeological material to argue that mythological gender transgressions were important to early Anglo-Saxon gendering. Beliefs in effeminate ælfe helped to demarcate gender norms, but also provided a paradigm whereby men could in real life gain supernatural power through gender transgression. I link the subsequent rise of female ælfe to changes in Anglo-Saxon gendering, whereby gender roles were enforced with increasing strictness. By combining detailed linguistic and textual analyses in a suitable comparative context, I reconstruct aspects of non-Christian belief which are marginalized in our early medieval sources, and detect how they changed over time. Such beliefs illuminate various aspects of medieval culture, including social identity, health and healing, the sources and use of supernatural power, and Christianisation. My methods, meanwhile, provide paradigms for taking similar approaches to studying belief and ideology in other areas of medieval Europe.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
3

Macmillan, Sarah M. "Asceticism in late-medieval religious writing : Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 114." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2010. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/1370/.

Full text
Abstract:
The five texts contained in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 114 (c. 1420-50) are seminal to understanding the centrality of asceticism in medieval English devotional literature. This thesis addresses the ways in which Douce 114 can be comprehended as a ‘whole book’ and as such outlines a transformation from extreme bodily mortification (in its first text) to the mortification of mind (in its last). It suggests that the manuscript was envisioned as a spiritual tool, its contents designed to be read in order, and that the central theme of asceticism is a hermeneutical device which guides the (Carthusian) reader’s spiritual development. The introduction provides a history of Christian asceticism while the first chapter contextualises attitudes to the phenomenon in late-medieval England. Chapters two and three examine the themes of Passion devotion and imitatio Christi in the Life of Elisabeth of Spalbeek, chapter four addresses the nature of embodiment and earthly purgatory in the Life of Christina Mirabilis, and chapter five examines the inherent problem of misguided bodily imitation of spiritual exemplars in reference to the Life of Marie of Oignies. In conclusion, chapter six argues that the Life of Catherine of Siena and Henry Suso’s Seven Points of True Love and Everlasting Wisdom, which emphasise the transcendence of bodliness, clarify the true inwardly ascetical nature of the preceding texts.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
4

Brandolino, Gina. "Voice lessons violence, voice, and interiority in Middle English religious narratives, 1300--1500 /." [Bloomington, Ind.] : Indiana University, 2007. http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:3283967.

Full text
Abstract:
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of English, 2007.
Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-10, Section: A, page: 4305. Adviser: Lawrence M. Clopper. Title from dissertation home page (viewed May 20, 2008).
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
5

Laferriere, Anik. "The Austin Friars in pre-Reformation English society." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2017. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:5f927d01-ce0b-4c17-83d8-b5346a9c22e5.

Full text
Abstract:
This study examines the role of the Austin Friars in pre-Reformation English society, as distinct both from the Austin Friars of Europe and from other English mendicant orders. By examining how the Austins formulated their origins story in a distinctly English context, this thesis argues that the hagiographical writings of the Austin Friars regarding Augustine of Hippo, whom they claimed as their putative founder, had profound consequences for their religious platform. As their definition of Augustine's religious life was less restrictive than that of the European Austin Friars and did not look to a recent, charismatic leader, such as Dominic or Francis, the English Austin Friars developed a religious adaptability visible in their pastoral, theological, and secular activity. This flexibility contributed to their durability by allowing them to adapt to religious needs as they arose rather than being constrained to what had been validated by their heritage. The behaviour of these friars can be characterised foremost by their ceaseless advancement of the interests of their own order through their creation of a network of influence and the manoeuvring of their confrères into socially and economically expedient positions. Given the propensity of the Austin Friars towards reform, this study seeks to understand its place within and interaction with English society, both religious and secular, in an effort to reconstruct the religious culture of this order. It therefore investigates their interaction with the laity and patronage, with heresy and reform, and with secular powers. It emphasises, above all, the distinctiveness of the English Austin Friars both from other mendicant orders and from the European Austin Friars, whose rigid interpretations of the religious example of Augustine led them to a strict demarcation of the Augustinian life as eremitical in nature and to hostile relations with the Augustinian Canons. Ultimately, this thesis interrogates the significance of being an Austin Friar in fifteenth- or sixteenth-century England and their role in the religious landscape, exploring the exceptional variability to their behaviour and their ability to take on accepted forms of behaviour.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
6

Joseph, James R. "Sarum Use and Disuse: A Study in Social and Liturgical History." University of Dayton / OhioLINK, 2016. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=dayton1470048407.

Full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
7

Pink, Stephen Arthur. "Holy scripture and the meanings of the Eucharist in late medieval England, C. 1370-1430." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2011. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:60a9655b-779b-4853-9102-7a9b058f0d5e.

Full text
Abstract:
This thesis examines how, in late-medieval England, uses of Scripture and associated written discourses expanded to encompass the sacramental functions hitherto privileged to the bread and wine of the Mass. This process, reflecting the longstanding if implicit importance of scriptural symbolism to the medieval Eucharist, also bears witness to a major cultural shift in this period: the assignment to words of the same powers that had underpinned the function of visual, non-verbal symbols in medieval religion and society. As Chapter Two demonstrates, this process was starkly exposed in John Wyclif’s vision of an English religion centred upon the sacrament of the preached word of Scripture, rather than on the Mass. As Chapter Three shows, this was the vision that Wyclif’s followers sought to realize, even if they may have achieved their aims only within a limited band of followers. However, Wyclif’s vision was powerful precisely because its relevance was not confined to Wycliffites. Chapter Four charts how the same substitution was taking place through the dissemination in English of ‘Scripture’, which, in its broadest sense, encompassed meditations upon depictions of Christ crucified as well as preaching. The greatest danger of Wycliffite thought to the late-medieval Church rested in its potential to increase lay awareness of this process. This threat was reflected in the restrictions placed by the English Church upon lay use of religious writings in the early fifteenth century. Nonetheless, as Chapter Five shows through a reading of one of Wyclif’s sternest critics, Thomas Netter, the eucharistic function of ‘Scripture’ had not disappeared but had to be occluded. This occlusion represents the most significant shift in the eucharistic function of ‘Scripture’ in the fifteenth century, allowing its use to develop further without threatening the Mass. This thesis concludes that the unacknowledged yet increasingly central role of ‘Scripture’ helps to explain why, at the Reformation, a scripturally-based religion seemed so quickly to supplant one to which images had been fundamental.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
8

Keating, Lise Manda. "Religious propaganda in selected Anglo-Saxton literature." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 1999. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/17868.

Full text
Abstract:
Includes bibliographical references.
This study of selected Old English texts, from the canons of Aelfric and Cynewulf, presents the argument that the primary purpose of the Saints' Lives in question is that of instruments of persuasion. After a description of the rites of Anglo-Saxon paganism, an attempt is made to outline the manner in which the Christian missionaries used certain aspects of pagan belief to promote Christianity. As such, these texts may therefore be viewed as religious propaganda in the Anglo- Saxon Church's attempt to win new converts to Christianity and to strengthen the faith of those already within its fold, firstly by promoting belief in the miraculous and secondly by investing Anglo-Saxon Christianity with the supernatural powers of the Anglo-Saxon and Celtic Pagan religions. Although the works of Cynewulf predate those of Aelfric, I have chosen to discuss the prose works of Aelfric first. However, I do not believe that reversing the historical order invalidates the argument.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
9

Mann, Erin Irene. "Relative identities: father-daughter incest in Medieval English religious literature." Diss., University of Iowa, 2011. https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/4873.

Full text
Abstract:
Medieval tales of father-daughter incest depict more than offensively dominant fathers and voiceless, victimized young women: these stories often contain moments of surprising counternarrative. My analysis of incest narratives foregrounds striking instances of feminine resistance, where daughters act independently, speak unrestrainedly, adopt masculine behaviors, and invert masculine gazes. I argue that daughters of incestuous fathers participate in a complex back-and-forth of attraction and rejection that thrusts the fraught nature of the incest into sharp relief, revealing the ways in which medieval families--as well as the medieval church and state--constructed and deconstructed identities and sexualities. Extending Judith Butler's insights on how incest tales interrogate state and kinship networks, I show how the liminal position of daughters in the family destabilizes the sex/gender system as it functioned in both the family and the larger world, secular and sacred. My dissertation thus relocates daughters from the periphery to the center of the medieval family. Christian thematics likewise provide a key framework for both my argument and medieval audiences: biblical translations and retellings, saints' lives, and moral exempla offered familiar points of reference. By revealing how authors and artists employed well-known religious stories to impart political readings of sexuality and of the family, the four chapters of my dissertation assert daughters' key role in medieval Christian culture. I examine both Anglo-Saxon texts--the biblical epic Genesis A and the prose Life of Euphrosyne--as well as the late medieval poem Cursor mundi and Chaucer's Clerk's Tale. My readings are enhanced by recourse to the medieval visual record offered by three manuscripts that illustrate the Lot story--British Library MS Cotton Claudius B.iv, the Old English Hexateuch, and Oxford Bodleian Library MSS Junius 11(the Genesis A manuscript) and Bodley 270b, a Biblé moralisée. Artistic renderings of father-daughter incest are no less unsettled than their literary counterparts, and demonstrate that the position of daughters was so fundamentally unstable that it often varied not only within an era, but also within a single manuscript. I argue that authors and artists radically reimagined the fundamental texts of the Middle Ages, including the Old Testament, to establish new narratives of sin and salvation, self and other, and power and submission.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
10

Robinson, Arabella Mary Milbank. "Love and drede : religious fear in Middle English." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2019. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/280671.

Full text
Abstract:
Several earlier generations of historians described the later Middle Ages as an 'age of fear'. This account was especially applied to accounts of the presumed mentality of the later medieval layperson, seen as at the mercy of the currents of plague, violence and dramatic social, economic and political change and, above all, a religiosity characterised as primitive or even pathological. This 'great fear theory' remains influential in public perception. However, recent scholarship has done much to restitute a more positive, affective, incarnational and even soteriologically optimistic late-medieval vernacular piety. Nevertheless, perhaps due to the positive and recuperative approach of this scholarship, it did not attend to the treatment of fear in devotional and literary texts of the period. This thesis responds to this gap in current scholarship, and the continued pull of this account of later-medieval piety, by building an account of fear's place in the rich vernacular theology available in the Middle English of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It takes as its starting point accounts of the role of fear in religious experience, devotion and practice within vernacular and lay contexts, as opposed to texts written by and for clerical audiences. The account of drede in Middle English strikingly integrates humbler aspects of fear into the relationship to God. The theological and indeed material circumstances of the later fourteenth century may have intensified fear's role: this thesis suggests that they also fostered an intensified engagement with the inherited tradition, generating fresh theological accounts of the place of fear. Chapter One begins with a triad of broadly pastoral texts which might be seen to disseminate a top-down agenda but which, this analysis discovers, articulate diverse ways in which the humble place of fear is elevated as part of a vernacular agenda. Here love and fear are always seen in a complex, varying dialectic or symbiosis. Chapter Two explores how this reaches a particular apex in the foundational and final place of fear in Julian of Norwich's Revelations, and is not incompatible even with her celebratedly 'optimistic' theology. Chapter Three turns to a more broadly accessed generic context, that of later medieval cycle drama, to engage in readings of Christ's Gethsemane fear in the 'Agony in the Garden' episodes. The N-Town, Chester, Towneley and York plays articulate complex and variant theological ideas about Christ's fearful affectivity as a site of imitation and participation for the medieval layperson. Chapter Four is a reading of Piers Plowman that argues a right fear is essential to Langland's espousal of a poetics of crisis and a crucial element in the questing corrective he applies to self and society. It executes new readings of key episodes in the poem, including the Prologue, Pardon, Crucifixion and the final apocalyptic passus, in the light of its theology of fear.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
More sources

Books on the topic "Medieval English religion"

1

Leadership in medieval English nunneries. Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: Boydell Press, 2005.

Find full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
2

History, religion, and violence: Cultural contexts for medieval and renaissance English drama. Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate, 2002.

Find full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
3

Elucidations: Medieval poetry and its religious backgrounds. Louvain: Peeters, 2010.

Find full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
4

Aers, David. The powers of the Holy: Religion, politics, and gender in late medieval English culture. University Park, Pa: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996.

Find full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
5

Relics and writing in late medieval England. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013.

Find full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
6

The late medieval English church: Vitality and vulnerability before the break with Rome. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012.

Find full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
7

Staging harmony: Music and religious change in late medieval and early modern English drama. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2016.

Find full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
8

The people of the parish: Community life in a late medieval English diocese. Philadelphia, Pa: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001.

Find full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
9

The boundaries of faith: The development and transmission of medieval spirituality. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996.

Find full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
10

Coletti, Theresa. Mary Magdalene and the drama of saints: Theater, gender, and religion in late medieval England. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004.

Find full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
More sources

Book chapters on the topic "Medieval English religion"

1

Gray, Douglas. "The Medieval Religious Lyric." In The Blackwell Companion to the Bible in English Literature, 76–84. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/9781444324174.ch6.

Full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
2

Baldwin, Anna. "Religious and Moral Stories." In An Introduction to Medieval English Literature, 154–97. London: Macmillan Education UK, 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-59582-9_7.

Full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
3

Thompson, John J. "Popular Reading Tastes in Middle English Religious and Didactic Literature." In From Medieval to Medievalism, 82–100. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 1992. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22233-9_7.

Full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
4

Johnston, Alexandra F. "The end of the world in medieval English religious drama." In Reading Texts for Performance and Performances as Texts, 38–51. Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge, 2021. |: Routledge, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781003007739-5.

Full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
5

Johnston, Alexandra F. "Medieval English religious plays as early fifteenth-century vernacular theology." In Reading Texts for Performance and Performances as Texts, 69–86. Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge, 2021. |: Routledge, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781003007739-7.

Full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
6

Baldwin, Anna. "The Community of the Church: Religious Lyrics and the English Mystics." In An Introduction to Medieval English Literature, 124–53. London: Macmillan Education UK, 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-59582-9_6.

Full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
7

Brown, Jennifer N. "From the Charterhouse to the Printing House: Catherine of Siena in Medieval England." In Middle English Religious Writing in Practice, 17–45. Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2013. http://dx.doi.org/10.1484/m.lmems.1.101536.

Full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
8

Sargent, Michael G. "Medieval and Modern Readership of Marguerite Porete’s Mirouer des simples âmes anienties: The French and English Traditions." In Middle English Religious Writing in Practice, 47–89. Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2013. http://dx.doi.org/10.1484/m.lmems.1.101537.

Full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
9

Jones, E. A. "Literature of Religious Instruction." In A Companion to Medieval English Literature and Culture c.1350-c.1500, 406–22. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2007. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/9780470996355.ch25.

Full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
10

Bose, Mishtooni. "Religious Authority and Dissent." In A Companion to Medieval English Literature and Culture c.1350-c.1500, 40–55. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2007. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/9780470996355.ch4.

Full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
You might also be interested in the extended bibliographies on the topic 'Medieval English religion' for particular source types:
Journal articles Dissertations / Theses Books
We offer discounts on all premium plans for authors whose works are included in thematic literature selections. Contact us to get a unique promo code!

To the bibliography