Mary Beth Long takes advantage of the fifteenth century's intense interest in the Virgin Mary, the best-documented mother of the medieval period, to examine the constructions and performances of maternity in vernacular religious texts.
By bringing together texts and authors that are not often discussed in tandem, this study offers a rich examination of the multiple factors at play as Marian material circulated among experienced devotional readers. Long employs a matricentric feminist approach to discern how readers' devotional literacies inform their understanding of the Virgin's maternal practice. Long attends to internal cues in the texts, to manuscript contexts, and to the evidence and content of readers' multiple literacies. She discerns the goals as well as the practice of literate Marian devotion. The result is a book that explains late-medieval perceptions of Mary's maternity and sets them against real maternal practice.
By:
Mary Beth Long
Imprint: Manchester University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 216mm,
Width: 138mm,
Spine: 21mm
Weight: 480g
ISBN: 9781526191601
ISBN 10: 1526191601
Series: Manchester Medieval Literature and Culture
Pages: 304
Publication Date: 01 July 2025
Audience:
General/trade
,
ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Introduction: Marian maternity, matricentric reading, and devotional literacies Part I The reader: Margery Kempe’s devotional literacies and imitatio Mariae 1 The Dominican literacies of Margery Kempe’s pilgrimages 2 Mar(ger)y at the foot of the Cross Part II The genre: Defining Marian absence in legendaries of women 3 The community service of mystics’ maternal bodies 4 ‘In Our Lady’s Binds’: Mary’s maternal peers in East Anglian devotion Part III The author: Chaucer as matricentric poet 5 A Mary for every mother: mothers as agents of orthodoxy 6 A Marian, maternal Cecilia Conclusion: ‘Show yourself a mother’ Bibliography Index -- .
Mary Beth Long is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Arkansas.
Reviews for Marian Maternity in Late-Medieval England
'This volume is engaging and successful in highlighting important aspects of medieval texts that tend to be neglected. Especially commendable is Long's ability to weave between the historical world of the authors/readers, the literary world of the texts, and the material world of the manuscripts' Tyng-Guang Chu, Reading Religion 'This expertly researched and accessible book focuses on the Virgin Mary as the ideal mother from the perspective of fifteenth-century European devotional literature. This is an example of some of the best scholarly writing. It is academically sound but accessible to broader audiences interested in learning about medieval representations of the Virgin Mary.' Sheryl A. Kujawa-Holbrook, AVE -- .
