| Paper 1224-b | 'In one ABC': Tracing the Alphabet in Medieval Devotional Literature
(Language: English)
Stacie Vos, Department of Literature, University of California, San Diego
Index terms: Biblical Studies, Language and Literature - Middle English, Literacy and Orality, Sermons and Preaching |
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| Abstract | Paper -a:
This paper will explore the word of Guglielmo Ventura (1250-1320), an Italian merchant who wrote his Memoriale with the experience and the rumours he had during his travel all around Europe, retracing the most important facts of his time. But his book is more than a storiografic novel because he used a type of language and citation not connected with non-clerical culture (and it is what we can expect from him), but connected with a biblical culture, using Latin and indirect and direct citation of the Scripture that staged the whole text. In the present state of research, he is the only merchant in the north of Italy in the late 13th century (in the same years Tuscan merchant wrote in volgare with an entirely different culture) who wrote his memoirs with devoted tears.
The purpose of this paper is to present critically a few chapters of the Memoriale (for the first time in a critical edition) where emerges this peculiarity. Why did he use it? What did it mean for him and for the architecture of the text?
Paper -b:
Medieval devotional literature draws upon the ABC as both a symbol for human understanding and as a reminder of its severe limitations. In one of the best known reflections of this kind, Julian of Norwich writes, 'of which gret things He will we have knowing here as it were in one ABC…' (III.80). Evidence of readers of the Wycliffite Bible reveals that the margins of the book made way to more than paraphrases of the text, becoming spaces in which readers practiced their ABCs at the same time that they considered how to order their lives according to Christianity. This paper draws from theology, lyric poetry, and bibliography in order to explore the connections between learning, devotion, and language in the Middle Ages.
Paper -c:
The proposed paper focuses on the development of the vernacular forms of the Pater noster prayer from Old to late Middle English. It is argued that the vernacular renditions maintained and shaped the memory of the basic prayer, but also reflected the evolution of theological exposition and catechetical instruction. Devised initially as a mnemonic instrument for illiterate Anglo-Saxons, the prayer evolved into a hermeneutic model of Christian life. The paper presents a variety of little known or hitherto unedited translations, paraphrases, and expositions to show how the memory of the text, central to Christian devotion, was sustained throughout the medieval period.
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