Kathryn Vulić, Susan Uselmann, and C. Annette Grisé, ed., Devotional Literature and Practice in Medieval England: Readers, Reading, and Reception. Disputatio 29. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2016, 282 pp.

Abstract

For medieval men and women, the process of reading—especially devotional reading—was far more complex that merely deciphering the letters on a page, as explained in this collection of nine distinguished essays with an Introduction and Afterword. Building on earlier scholarship, copiously cited, this volume forms “a contribution to the history of reading” (1) through its highly interdisciplinary approach that recurrently traces the influence of monastic reading practices, especially lectio divina, among the wider devout population. Most of the essays focus on vernacular materials sought after and read—or read aloud—among the laity, although the same English books (in manuscript or print) might also have been owned by religious houses.