Language, Self and Love: Hermeneutics in Richard Rolle and the Commentaries of the Song of Songs

by Denis Renevey

Overview

Language, Self and Love offers a unique insight into the development of the language of interiority in the medieval literature inspired by the Song of Songs and its commentaries. It traces the evolution of a medieval identity in the process of self-fashioning and, in showing the importance of mystical writing for understanding medieval subjectivity, suggests that the 'self' is not the early modern invention it is often claimed to be. Denis Renevey discusses the correspondences between the discourse of love in the Song of Songs and the language of mysticism in the writings of William of St Thierry and Richard Rolle, where the self is described in its attempts at establishing a direct relationship with God. He also shows how the textual strategies offered in mystical writing for the use of female recipients engage with questions of misogyny and the relationship between Latin and vernacular cultures.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780708316962
Publisher:	University of Wales Press
Publication date:	10/30/2001
Series:	University of Wales Press - Writers of Wales Ser.
Pages:	228
Product dimensions:	8.50(w) x 5.60(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Denis Renevey is professor of Old and Middle English at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. Christiania Whitehead is senior lecturer in medieval English literature at the University of Warwick. Anne Mouron is a fellow in English at Greyfriars, University of Oxford.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

Introduction

Part 1: Hermeneutics and Language of Love in the Twelfth Century

1. Language Theory in the Twelfth Century

2. Hermeneutics and Degrees of Love

3. Discovering the Self through Love in the Writings of William of St Thierry

Part 2: Self and Tradition: Richard Rolle and the Commentary Tradition of the Song of Songs

Prologue

4. From Interpres to Auctor: New Contexts for the Vocabulary of Love

5. Love of God and Lovers of the World: Self and Audience in Contra amatores mundi

6. Hermeneutics and Degrees of Love in the Epistles

Afterword

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Editorial Reviews

There is no doubt that Language, Self and Love is an original contribution to scholarship . . . Renevey has succeeded in treating the work of one of the most impenetrable of medieval authors with coolness and integrity” –Mystics Quarterly

Mystics Quarterly

Language, Self and Love makes accessible some of the important liturgical and lexio divina aspects of self-shaping in reading and writing, utterance and listening as reflections on motives. It is sure to have a solid impact upon how the medieval mystics are likely to be read as well as a good demonstration of historically informed, nuanced hermeneutical reading.” –www.wordtrade.com/religion/

www.wordtrade.com/religion/