Interpreting the visual dynamics of religious manuscripts in England, 1260-1500
In this thesis, I contend that the visual dynamics of religious manuscripts produced in England (1260-1500) had fundamental importance in shaping the cognitive and conceptual responses of readers who were not literate in Latin. I begin by establishing the primacy of Latin paraliturgical materials, used for teaching beginning readers the preliminary skills needed to recite Latin prayers. In Books of Hours, all the visual components of the page combined to inculcate a distinctive mode of reading, close to monastic lectio, which was to influence Middle English devotional writing. In my second chapter, I demonstrate that thirteenth-century pastoral writings such as the Manuel des PĂ©chĂ©s placed readers in intimate contact with modes of reading translated from the Latin, and that this mode of reading endured in popularity into the fifteenth century. My third chapter considers the translation of the French of England of the Manuel into Middle English as Handlyng Synne, and the transmission of that Middle English text in late fourteenth- and fifteenth-century manuscripts. Handlyng Synne repositions the French of England as a language exclusive to âclerkes,â and this repositioning creates a space in which Latin
Allen, Lucy
Interpreting the visual dynamics of religious manuscripts in England, 1260-1500. In this thesis, I contend that the visual dynamics of religious manuscripts produced in England (1260-1500) had fundamental importance in shaping the cognitive and conceptual responses of readers who were not literate in Latin. I begin by establishing the primacy of Latin paraliturgical materials, used for teaching beginning readers the preliminary skills needed to recite Latin prayers. In Books of Hours, all the visual components of the page combined to inculcate a distinctive mode of reading, close to monastic lectio, which was to influence Middle English devotional writing. In my second chapter, I demonstrate that thirteenth-century pastoral writings such as the Manuel des PĂ©chĂ©s placed readers in intimate contact with modes of reading translated from the Latin, and that this mode of reading endured in popularity into the fifteenth century. My third chapter considers the translation of the French of England of the Manuel into Middle English as Handlyng Synne, and the transmission of that Middle English text in late fourteenth- and fifteenth-century manuscripts. Handlyng Synne repositions the French of England as a language exclusive to âclerkes,â and this repositioning creates a space in which Latin
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