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The Readers' Reformation: Women's Literacy, Private Devotion, and Richard Whitford's Spiritual Instruction

  • Author(s) / Creator(s)

  • SSHRC IG awarded 2022: Richard Whitford was the most important English monastic author of the late Middle Ages as he distinguished himself by writing and translating a series of devotional texts aimed at both women religious and a lay public. The project will illustrate the importance of eight of Whitford's texts as guides to late medieval spirituality. The PI will do this by analysing the way his writing responds to a growing desire among readers unable to read Latin for access to the contemplative life and liturgical practice of professional religious. The project will examine these texts as sites where concerns over the shape of late medieval devotion are being negotiated. The PI will ask, for example, how Whitford navigates such contentious issues as the education and contemplative practice of nuns, their autonomy in shaping their own spiritual direction, the adaptation of monastic devotion for laypeople, private reading, translation of biblical texts, and the utility of the press as a vehicle for instruction. The methodological approach the PI takes is interdisciplinary and will draw from the fields of literature, gender studies, history, religious studies, book history, and editorial studies. The reading of these texts is largely New Historicist.

  • Date created
    09/17/2021
  • Subjects / Keywords
  • Type of Item
    Research Material
  • DOI
    https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-n460-ny19
  • License
    ©️Alakas, Brandon C. All rights reserved other than by permission. This document embargoed to those without UAlberta CCID until 2029.