Reading Religious Miscellanies in Fifteenth-Century England.

摘要

The dissertation explores the piety of pre-Reformation England, and it attempts to determine if individuals were predisposed to religious change. In order to examine the piety of individuals, the project analyzes reader produced marks and scribal editing in manuscripts containing Pore Caitif, Jacob's Well, and Festial. These are fifteenth-century orthodox devotional works and sermon manuscripts. While scholars have used these texts in a variety of ways, I argue that readers and users focused on a variety of passages, none of which actually contain the information scholars have analyzed. They focused on the works' didactic qualities, not their theological elements.