Friday 17th March 16:30—18:00
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| Overview of programme | ||||||
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Keynote lecture |
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Place: |
Seminarraum 1 |
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Introduction: |
Ian Johnson |
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Title and speaker: |
Miscellaneity in Practice: Popular Religious Reading and Cultural Translation in Fifteenth Century England |
Miscellaneity in Practice: Popular Religious Reading and Cultural Translation in Fifteenth Century England
Elisabeth Salter
The fifteenth century is often considered to be marked by the growth of vernacular lay literacy. The COST Action IS1301 “new communities of interpretation” works with this premise with a pan-European investigation of religious culture in medieval and early modern society. This paper will focus on the English context, with a sense of the possibilities for exploring European comparisons and it arises from my ongoing investigation of the creativity of late medieval readers in popular culture.
I propose that we can gain access to fifteenth century people’s practices and experiences (of religiosity) through the detailed examination of the reading matter that was widely accessible alongside their “biographical” documents where these survive. One of the most important areas for literate activity in popular culture was religious reading. The paper looks in detail at some examples from the broad category known as “works of religious instruction” alongside the evidence provided by surviving “biographical” documents such as the Last will and testament. Many of these works of religious instruction are preserved in books with multiple texts, often described as miscellanies.
At the heart of my investigation of these issues is an acknowledgement of the acts of cultural translation (sometimes described as “cultural appropriation”) that fifteenth century people engaged in during (religious) literate activity as they negotiated between religious instruction and everyday life and personal experience. Alongside this, I’m mindful of the translation processes we are ourselves involved in as we interpret the evidence before us. For this paper I will propose some ways of thinking of “miscellaneity in practice” which I think enable a more nuanced understanding of fifteenth century peoples’ experiences of cultural translation.