Overview

This essay collection is gathered on the occasion of the retirement of Denise N. Baker, Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. New Directions in Medieval Mystical and Devotional Literature draws together the work of young and early career scholars who have worked with Baker as students as well as peers who have published her work, contributed to collections Baker has edited, and have been inspired and influenced by her wide-ranging and important scholarship over the past four decades. This collection includes studies of the wide variety of the texts and topics that have been the subject of Baker’s scholarly work, from the importance of philosophical and intellectual history in Julian of Norwich’s Showings and Langland’s Piers Plowman, to the gendered nature of martyrdom in medieval hagiography, to the preoccupation of architectural memorialization in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. These essays bridge the often wide gap between scholarship on medieval mystical texts, such as the writings of Julian of Norwich and the Cloud of Unknowing author, and scholarship on the work of major medieval vernacular authors such William Langland and Geoffrey Chaucer.

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9781611462852

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Reviews

In ten varied and useful essays gathered for this volume, former students and colleagues celebrate the life's work of the wonderful Denise N. Baker, whose sensitive and incisive scholarship is always worth close attention. Ranging over many topics and with particular attention to the writings of Chaucer, Julian of Norwich, and William Langland, this book is a fitting tribute to a scholar whose clarity of thought continues to generate new directions for study, some of which are aptly pursued here in her honor.--Cristina Maria Cervone, professor of English, University of Memphis Over the past fifty years, Denise N. Baker has produced a stream of studies, books, and editions that have had a shaping influence on Middle English scholarship, especially through her transformative work on the fourteenth-century visionary theologian Julian of Norwich. New Directions in Medieval Mystical and Devotional Literature not only makes a fitting tribute to a beloved scholar and teacher; it constitutes a significant contribution to the field in its own right. The essays in this beautifully presented book will be essential reading for anyone interested in late-medieval vernacular theology and its reception, both in England and beyond.--Nicholas Watson, professor of English, Harvard University

In ten varied and useful essays gathered for this volume, former students and colleagues celebrate the life's work of the wonderful Denise N. Baker, whose sensitive and incisive scholarship is always worth close attention. Ranging over many topics and with particular attention to the writings of Chaucer, Julian of Norwich, and William Langland, this book is a fitting tribute to a scholar whose clarity of thought continues to generate new directions for study, some of which are aptly pursued here in her honor. Over the past fifty years, Denise N. Baker has produced a stream of studies, books, and editions that have had a shaping influence on Middle English scholarship, especially through her transformative work on the fourteenth-century visionary theologian Julian of Norwich. New Directions in Medieval Mystical and Devotional Literature not only makes a fitting tribute to a beloved scholar and teacher; it constitutes a significant contribution to the field in its own right. The essays in this beautifully presented book will be essential reading for anyone interested in late-medieval vernacular theology and its reception, both in England and beyond.

Author Information

Amy N. Vines is associate professor of English at University of North Carolina, Greensboro. Lee Templeton is associate professor of English at North Carolina Wesleyan University.

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