Materiality of Middle English Anchoritic Devotion

Michelle M. Sauer is Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor of English & Gender Studies at the University of North Dakota. A specialist in medieval reclusion, she is recipient of the Thomas J. Clifford award for research excellence, and also authored Gender in Medieval Culture. Jenny C. Bledsoe is an Assistant Professor of English at Northeastern State University, OK, and a specialist in medieval manuscripts.

• Introduction: “The Significance of Things: Materiality, Embodiment, and Early Middle English Reclusion”, Michelle M. Sauer and Jenny C. Bledsoe“Blessedly clothed with gems of virtue”: Clothing and Female Reclusion in The Life of Mary of Egypt and The Life of Christina Markyate”, Anna McKayMateriality, Documentary Authority, and the Circulation of the Katherine Group, Jenny C. BledsoeFraming Materiality: Relic Discourse and Medieval English Anchoritism, Michelle M. Sauer“Clean hands and a pure heart”: Relics and the Recluse’s Touch in Goscelin’s Miracles of St. Edmund, Sophie Sawicka-SykesA Matter of Voice: Mary, Silence, and the Fictions of Power in Ancrene Wisse 2.269–474, Joshua S. EasterlingThe Anchoritic Body at Prayer in Goscelin of St. Bertin’s Liber confortatorius, Alicia SmithPECE ⁊ Oþer: Stupor in John of Gaddesden’s Rosa medicinæ, Laura GodfreyThe Material of Vernacular English Devotion: Temptation and Sweetness in Ancrene Wisse and Richard Rolle’s Form of Living, Jennifer N. BrownConsidering the Archaeological Context of an Anchoritic Cell at Ruyton, Shropshire, Victoria Yuskaitis

As one of the most important religious movements for women in the later Middle Ages, it has been concerning that the material traces of anchoritism have rarely played a leading role in scholarly investigation, in spite of some very important, but often isolated, archaeological interventions. This book’s foray into anchoritic materiality, led by Michelle M. Sauer and Jenny C. Bledsoe—the former of whom is one of the few anchoritic scholars to have been working with materiality for some decades—is therefore most welcome. [...]From start to finish, therefore, The Materiality of Middle English Anchoritic Devotion is a strong volume, carefully devised for purposes of maximum cohesion, and adding to current debates surrounding anchoritic studies, its developing methodologies, and knowledge repositories.