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Marian maternity in late-medieval England 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.
Taking a close look at the private devotional reading of late-medieval patrons, the book shows how texts including Chaucer’s poetry, Margery Kempe’s Boke, and legendaries of female saints are saturated with indirect references to and imitations of the Virgin. Marian maternity in late-medieval England employs a matricentric feminist approach to discern how readers’ devotional literacies inform their understanding and imitation of the Virgin’s maternal practice. Attending to internal cues in the texts, to manuscript contexts, and to the evidence and content of readers’ multiple literacies, the author examines Marian maternity as both theological concept and imitable practice. The result is a book that explains late-medieval perceptions of Mary’s maternity and sets them against readers’ devotional, emotional and relational circumstances.
'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
'This book is a striking example of how feminist studies of medieval literature can join contemporary discourses regarding motherhood and gendered labor... I highly recommend this book to scholars of the Middle Ages or to non-experts who seek to understand how this medieval cultural fascination with the Virgin resonates with contemporary discourses about gender roles and parenting'
Sarah Friedman, Medieval Feminist Forum
'Marian Maternity is a cutting-edge study that will surely change how we understand motherhood in the Middle Ages and offers new ways of thinking about the politics of maternity in our day. I have been and will be recommending it to colleagues and graduate students as illustrative of the best and most courageous scholarship that is being published in the 2020s.'
Karen Winstead, Speculum
'high quality of scholarship, deep insight, and impressive breadth of knowledge displayed throughout this book... In short, scholars interested in the cult of the Virgin, gender, and contemporary social issues will certainly want to add Marian Maternity to their library.'
Mary Dzon, Sixteenth Century Journal
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