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Looking Inward: Devotional Reading and the Private Self in Late Medieval England

Bryan, Jennifer

This challenging study looks at the most popular genre of English book in the Later Middle Ages, the devotional treatise. Jennifer Bryan argues that the widespread dissemination of such texts proves not that English men and women were especially pious in this era, but were reading them for their other qualities. Devotional literature, she explains, encouraged readers to focus on themselves and their own identities, in effect they acted as a mirror on the soul, and their popularity both reflected and contributed to a growing feeling of self-awareness in late medieval society. 270p (Pennsylvania UP 2008)

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