English Psalms in the Middle Ages, 1300-1450

English Psalms in the Middle Ages, 1300-1450

Author: Annie Sutherland

Publisher:

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 0198726368

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English Psalms in the Middle Ages, 1300-1450 explores vernacular translation, adaptation, and paraphrase of the biblical psalms. Focussing on a wide and varied body of texts, it examines translations of the complete psalter as well as renditions of individual psalms and groups of psalms. Exploring who translated the psalms, and how and why they were translated, it also considers who read these texts and how and why they were read. Annie Sutherland foregrounds the centrality of the voice of David in the devotional landscape of the period, suggesting that the psalmist offered the prayerful, penitent Christian a uniquely articulate and emotive model of utterance before God. Examining the evidence of contemporary wills and testaments as well as manuscripts containing the translations, she highlights the popularity of the psalms among lay and religious readers, considering how, when, and by whom the translated psalms were used as well as thinking about who translated them and how and why they were translated. In investigating these and other areas, English Psalms in the Middle Ages, 1300-1450 raises questions about interactions between Latinity and vernacularity in the late Middle Ages and situates the translated psalms in a literary and theoretical context.


The Psalms and Medieval English Literature

The Psalms and Medieval English Literature

Author: Tamara Atkin

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 364

ISBN-13: 1843844354

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An examination of how The Book of Psalms shaped medieval thought and helped develop the medieval English literary canon. The Book of Psalms had a profound impact on English literature from the Anglo-Saxon to the late medieval period. This collection examines the various ways in which they shaped medieval English thought and contributed to the emergence of an English literary canon. It brings into dialogue experts on both Old and Middle English literature, thus breaking down the traditional disciplinary binaries of both pre- and post-Conquest English and late medieval and Early Modern, as well as emphasizing the complex and fascinating relationship between Latin and the vernacular languages of England. Its three main themes, translation, adaptation and voice, enable a rich variety of perspectives on the Psalms and medieval English literature to emerge. TAMARA ATKIN is Senior Lecturer in Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Literature at Queen Mary University of London; FRANCIS LENEGHAN is Associate Professor of OldEnglish at The University of Oxford and a Fellow of St Cross College, Oxford Contributors: Daniel Anlezark, Mark Faulkner, Vincent Gillespie, Michael P. Kuczynski, David Lawton, Francis Leneghan, Jane Roberts, Mike Rodman Jones, Elizabeth Solopova, Lynn Staley, Annie Sutherland, Jane Toswell, Katherine Zieman.


From Scrolls to Scrolling

From Scrolls to Scrolling

Author: Bradford A. Anderson

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2020-06-22

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13: 3110631466

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Throughout history, the study of sacred texts has focused almost exclusively on the content and meaning of these writings. Such a focus obscures the fact that sacred texts are always embodied in particular material forms—from ancient scrolls to contemporary electronic devices. Using the digital turn as a starting point, this volume highlights material dimensions of the sacred texts of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The essays in this collection investigate how material aspects have shaped the production and use of these texts within and between the traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, from antiquity to the present day. Contributors also reflect on the implications of transitions between varied material forms and media cultures. Taken together, the essays suggests that materiality is significant for the academic study of sacred texts, as well as for reflection on developments within and between these religious traditions. This volume offers insightful analysis on key issues related to the materiality of sacred texts in the traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, while also highlighting the significance of transitions between various material forms, including the current shift to digital culture.


Women and Devotional Literature in the Middle Ages

Women and Devotional Literature in the Middle Ages

Author: Cate Gunn

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer

Published: 2023-11-07

Total Pages: 333

ISBN-13: 1843846624

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Essays on women and devotional literature in the Middle Ages in commemoration and celebration of the respected feminist scholar Catherine Innes-Parker. Silence was a much-lauded concept in the Middle Ages, particularly in the context of religious literature directed at women. Based on the Pauline prescription that women should neither preach nor teach, and should at all times keep speech to a minimum, the concept of silence lay at the forefront of many devotional texts, particularly those associated with various forms of women's religious enclosure. Following the example of the Virgin Mary, religious women were exhorted to speak seldom, and then only seriously and devoutly. However, as this volume shows, such gendered exhortations to silence were often more rhetorical than literal. The contributions range widely: they consider the English 'Wooing Group' texts and female-authored visionary writings from the Saxon nunnery of Helfta in the thirteenth century; works by Richard Rolle and the Dutch mystic Jan van Ruusbroec in the fourteenth century; Anglo-French treatises, and books housed in the library of the English noblewoman Cecily Neville in the fifteenth century; and the resonant poetics of women from non-Christian cultures. But all demonstrate the ways in which silence, rather than being a mere absence of speech, frequently comprised a form of gendered articulation and proto-feminist point of resistance. They thus provide an apt commemoration and celebration of the deeply innovative work of Catherine Innes-Parker (1956-2019), the respected feminist scholar and a pioneer of this important field of study.


The Practice and Politics of Reading, 650-1500

The Practice and Politics of Reading, 650-1500

Author: Daniel G. Donoghue

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer

Published: 2022-09-06

Total Pages: 355

ISBN-13: 1843846411

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A new look at how reading was practised and represented in England from the seventh century to the beginnings of the print era, finding many kinships between reading cultures across the medieval longue durée.


The Anglo-Saxon Psalter

The Anglo-Saxon Psalter

Author: M. J. Toswell

Publisher: Brepols Publishers

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9782503545486

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The psalms are at the heart of Christian devotion, in the Middle Ages and still today. Learned early and sung weekly by every medieval monastic and cleric, the psalms were the language Christ and his ancestor David used to speak to God. Powerful and plaintive, angry and anguished, laudatory and lamenting: the psalms expressed the feelings and thoughts of the individuals who devised them and those who sang them privately or publicly in Anglo-Saxon England many generations later. Psalters from Anglo-Saxon England are the largest surviving single group of manuscripts, and also form a very significant percentage of the fragments of manuscripts extant from the period. Psalters were central to the liturgy, particularly for the daily Office, and were the first schoolbooks for the learning of Latin and Christian doctrine. Moreover, from Anglo-Saxon England comes the earliest complex of vernacular psalter material, including glossed and bilingual psalters, complete psalter translations, and poems based on individual psalms and on psalmic structures. The lament psalms are remarkably similar to the Old English elegies in both form and imagery, and the freedom with which vernacular adaptors of the psalms went about their work in Anglo-Saxon England suggests an appropriation of the psalter not as the sacred and unchanging Word but as words that could be turned to use for meditation, study, reading, and private prayer. Worth investigation are both individual figures who used the psalms such as Bede, Alfred, and Aelfric, and also the unknown compilers and scribes who developed new layouts for psalter manuscripts and repurposed earlier or Continental manuscripts for use in Anglo-Saxon England. In Latin and in the vernacular, these codices were central to Anglo-Saxon spirituality, while some of them also continued to be used well into the later Middle Ages.


Old English Psalms

Old English Psalms

Author: Patrick P. O’Neill

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2016-04-30

Total Pages: 744

ISBN-13: 0674504755

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The Latin psalms—translated into Old English—figured prominently in the lives of Anglo-Saxons, whether sung by clerics, studied as a textbook for language learning, or recited in private devotion by lay people. The complete text of all 150 prose and verse psalms is available here in contemporary English for the first time.