Staging Contemplation

Staging Contemplation Participatory Theology in Middle English Prose, Verse, and Drama

Hardback (07 Sep 2018)

Not available for sale

Includes delivery to the United States

Out of stock

This service is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Publisher's Synopsis

What does it mean to contemplate? In the Middle Ages, more than merely thinking with intensity, it was a religious practice entailing utter receptiveness to the divine presence. Contemplation is widely considered by scholars today to have been the highest form of devotional prayer, a rarified means of experiencing God practiced only by the most devout of monks, nuns, and mystics.
            Yet, in this groundbreaking new book, Eleanor Johnson argues instead for the pervasiveness and accessibility of contemplative works to medieval audiences. By drawing together ostensibly diverse literary genres-devotional prose, allegorical poetry, cycle dramas, and morality plays-Staging Contemplation paints late Middle English contemplative writing as a broad genre that operated collectively and experientially as much as through radical individual disengagement from the world. Johnson further argues that the contemplative genre played a crucial role in the exploration of the English vernacular as a literary and theological language in the fifteenth century, tracing how these works engaged modes of disfluency-from strained syntax and aberrant grammar, to puns, slang, code-switching, and laughter-to explore the limits, norms, and potential of English as a devotional language. Full of virtuoso close readings, this book demonstrates a sustained interest in how poetic language can foster a participatory experience of likeness to God among lay and devotional audiences alike.

Book information

ISBN: 9780226572031
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Imprint: The University of Chicago Press
Pub date:
DEWEY: 820.9001
DEWEY edition: 23
Language: English
Number of pages: 256
Weight: 492g
Height: 158mm
Width: 234mm
Spine width: 23mm