Abstract
What has emerged from much recent feminist analysis of medieval devotional literature is a model of reading based on a theorized resistance by the female reader to the misogyny of the medieval text. Yet this model of reading limits opportunities for positive communication between text and reader. This article offers an analysis of readers characterized in Hali Meiðhad through the use of parenthetical honorifics and direct address to argue that features encoded to entice reader participation or cue certain reader responses are more complex than has been noted and move beyond any unproblematic notion of avoidable misogyny. The description of narrative shifts in this discussion relies on Deictic Shift Theory to illustrate how the author of Hali Meiðhad explicitly shifts his readers from identification with one reader-character to another over the course of the epistle, enabling his readers to position themselves self-consciously in relation to various Christian identities.
Published Version
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