Inventing English Textuality in 15th-Century Religious Writing

FAIN: HR-50247-06

Elizabeth Kate Schirmer
New Mexico State University (Las Cruces, NM 88003-8002)

Examines disparate canonizing gestures in 15th-c. religious writing, to rethink the impact of Lollardy on English reading and writing. Challenging a view of the Lollards as democratizers and their opponents as censors, argues that each side in the controversy canonized a single model of reading as uniquely authoritative. Describes alternate canonizing projects that sought to preserve the diversity and multiplicity of 14th-c. vernacular theologies, resisting the polarizing and essentializing impulses of the Lollard controversy. Analyzes the role of gender and of narrative in these competing inventions of English textuality; asks how they might complicate received narratives of the transition from medieval to Early Modern.