Just as twenty-first-century technologies like blogs and wikis have transformed the once private act of reading into a public enterprise, devotional reading experiences in the Middle Ages were dependent upon an oscillation between the solitary and the communal. In Reading in the Wilderness, Jessica Brantley uses tools from both literary criticism and art history to illuminate Additional MS 37049, an illustrated Carthusian miscellany housed in the British Library. This revealing artifact, Brantley argues, closes the gap between group spectatorship and private study in late medieval England.
Drawing on the work of W. J. T. Mitchell, Michael Camille, and others working at the image-text crossroads, Reading in the Wilderness addresses the manuscript’s texts and illustrations to examine connections between reading and performance within the solitary monk’s cell and also outside. Brantley reimagines the medieval codex as a site where the meanings of images and words are performed, both publicly and privately, in the act of reading.
Jessica Brantley is associate professor of English at Yale University.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations List of Abbreviations Acknowledgments
1. Introduction: The Performance of Reading
2. “Silence Visible”: Carthusian Devotional Reading and Meditative Practice Backgrounds: The Carthusian Order Carthusians and Books Carthusians and Art
3. The Shapes of Eremitic Reading in the Desert of Religion The Desert of Religion as Imagetext “Als Wildernes Is Wroght þis Boke”: Formats of Monastic Books Reading Spiritual Community in the Wilderness
4. Lyric Imaginings and Painted Prayers The Eremitic Lyric and Richard Rolle Imagining the Carthusian Reader
5. Liturgical Pageantry in Private Spaces Reading the Liturgy: Two Models Performing the Holy Name Performing the Canonical Hours Performing the Seven Sacraments
6. Envisioning Dialogue in Performance “In Maner of a Dyaloge It Wente” Allegorical Dialogues: The Pylgremage of the Sowle Mystical Dialogues: The Tretyse of þe Seven Poyntes of Trewe Love and Everlastynge Wisdame
7. Dramatizing the Cell: Theatrical Performances in Monastic Reading Dramatic Texts, Lyric Voices, and Private Readers Theatrical Reading in Additional 3749 Monastic Closet Drama
8. Conclusion: Reading Performances
Appendix: Contents of British Library MS Additional 3749 Notes Bibliography Index
