In this book, Martha Rust advances a new theory of what written lists are and how they work, arguing that they signify not only as collections of words but also as series of images and things. As a consequence, lists call upon mental skills associated not only with literacy but also with numeracy, competencies that verge upon each other in the semantic field of the word “reckoning”: tallying, telling, counting, ordering, categorizing, and rendering account—whether with respect to affairs of the world or of the soul. Rust develops this theory of the list form in the context of late medieval English lists of sevens, lists of relics, lists of times (in the form of schedules), and lists of place names (in the form of itineraries). When taken as the material for poems or diagrams, these lists engage readers and viewers in interactive reckonings with the multi-modal potentials of the list form. Inevitably, Middle English examples of this poetics of reckoning open onto matters that are beyond reckoning. Although it focuses on medieval lists, this book will appeal to readers interested in the cognitive turn in literary criticism as well as to lovers of lists more generally.

Book description from De Gruyter’s website: In medieval England, women in labor wrapped birth girdles around their abdomens to protect themselves and their unborn children. These parchment or paper rolls replicated the “girdle relics” of the Virgin Mary and other saints loaned to queens and noblewomen, extending childbirth protection to women of all classes. This book examines the texts and images of nine English birth girdles produced between the reigns of Richard II and Henry VIII. Cultural artifacts of lay devotion within the birthing chamber, the birth girdles offered the solace and promise of faith to the parturient woman and her attendants amid religious dissent, political upheaval, recurring epidemics, and the onset of print.

Nicole Rice’s original study analyzes the role played by late medieval English hospitals as sites of literary production and cultural contestation. The hospitals of late medieval England defy easy categorization. They were institutions of charity, medical care, and liturgical commemoration. At the same time, hospitals were cultural spaces sponsoring the performance of drama, the composition of medical texts, and the reading of devotional prose and vernacular poetry. Such practices both reflected and connected the disparate groups—regular religious, ill and poor people, well-off retirees—that congregated in hospitals. Nicole Rice’s The Medieval Hospital offers the first book-length study of the place of hospitals in English literary history and cultural practice. Read more in the flyer below and at the book’s page at the University of Notre Dame’s press (here).

Women’s Libraries in Late Medieval Bourbonnais, Burgundy, and France: A Family Affair by EBS member S. C. Kaplan’s book is now out from Liverpool University Press! Read all about it at the Press’s website (and get a 20% discount on it if you for purchase it from that site!).

EBS member Lori Jones announces the publication of her book, Patterns of Plague: Changing Ideas about Plague in England and France, 1348–1750, which discusses various aspects of plague tractates including their transition from MS to print, shifting emphases, and their use of images. Members interested in receiving a discount are asked to contact Lori directly at ljone041@uottawa.ca.

Follow this link to publisher’s site.

Click-able version of Zoom link: https://ucla.zoom.us/j/97007181579

Description from the publishers site (here)
Linne R. Mooney, Emeritus Professor of Palaeography at the University of York, has significantly advanced the study of later medieval English book production, particularly our knowledge of individual scribes; this collection honours her distinguished scholarship and responds to her wide-ranging research on Middle English manuscripts and texts.

The thirteen essays brought together here take a variety of approaches – palaeographical, codicological, dialectal, textual, art historical – to the study of the English medieval book and to the varied environments (professional, administrative, mercantile, ecclesiastical) where manuscripts were produced and used during the period 1300-1550. Acknowledging that books and readers are no respecters of borders, this collection’s geographical scope extends beyond England in the east to Ghent and Flanders, and in the west to Waterford and the Dublin Pale.

Contributors explore manuscripts containing works by key writers, including Geoffrey Chaucer, John Gower, John Wyclif, and Walter Hilton. Major texts whose manuscript traditions are scrutinized include Speculum Vitae, the Scale of Perfection, the Canterbury Tales, and Confessio Amantis, along with a wide range of shorter works such as lyric poems, devotional texts, and historical chronicles. London book-making activities and the scribal cultures of other cities and monastic centres all receive attention, as does the book production of personal miscellanies. By considering both literary texts and the letters, charters, and writs that medieval scribes produced, in Latin and Anglo-French as well as English, this collection celebrates Professor Mooney’s influence on the field and presents a holistic sense of England’s pre-modern textual culture.

Meter and Modernity in English Verse, 1350-1650

Find a description of the book at the Penn Press site (here), and find details on acquiring it (and other Penn Press books) at 40% off (through June 15) at this site here.

The Clerical Proletariat and the Resurgence of Medieval English Poetry

Find a description of the book at the Penn Press site (here), and NB: get a 40% discount on Penn Press books through June 15! Find full details at this page here.

From the publisher’s website: “This study examines the gift book practices of Elizabeth and Mary Tudor, both queens of England; it begins with pre-accession dedications given to each of them, moves to their typical patterns of New Year’s gift giving, explores two of Mary’s own translations, and ends on how they each engaged in translations that were published in 1548. It argues that Elizabeth’s dedications to her family, while participating in the tradition of giving books, were unique and in the dedications she intended not only to represent her loyalty but also to stabilize her position within the royal family.”

Find further details here.