Unmystical Rolle
Sponsoring Organization(s)
Lollard Society
Organizer Name
Michael Van Dussen; Andrew Kraebel
Organizer Affiliation
McGill Univ.; Trinity Univ.
Presider Name
Steven Rozenski
Presider Affiliation
Univ. of Rochester
Paper Title 1
Demystifying Heavenly Song: "Canor" and the Devotional Text
Presenter 1 Name
Timothy Glover
Presenter 1 Affiliation
Univ. of Oxford
Paper Title 2
Strong Women and Scribal Authors
Presenter 2 Name
Andrew Kraebel
Paper Title 3
The Hussite Context of Rolle's Latin Psalter
Presenter 3 Name
Petra Mutlová; Michael Van Dussen
Presenter 3 Affiliation
Masaryk Univ.; McGill Univ.
Start Date
12-5-2018 10:00 AM
Session Location
Schneider 1135
Description
The early fourteenth-century Yorkshire hermit, Richard Rolle, has long been known as one of the premier mystical writers of the English Middle Ages. He was positioned at the beginning of “the brilliant procession of English mystics” by Evelyn Underhill (1911), a reputation supported by the early publication of Incendium Amoris, the most substantial account of his mystical experiences, by Margaret Deanesly (1915). This view of Rolle as primarily a mystical author is supported, more recently, in Nicholas Watson’s influential literary biography, Richard Rolle and the Invention of Authority (1991), where his less obviously mystical works are positioned early in Rolle’s career, thereby made explicable as juvenilia beyond which the mystic quickly moved. This session aims to balance this longstanding emphasis by attending instead to what might be called, roughly, Rolle’s unmystical works (in English and in Latin)––derivative pieces, dull tracts, boring bits of exegesis, rigidly programmatic writings, etc. How might devoting more sustained attention to these works change our understanding of this important English author, of his appeal to medieval readers, and perhaps even of the chronology of his writings that Watson proposed? Papers should focus on individual writings or groups of writings by (or attributed to) Rolle, on case studies of manuscripts containing his works, or perhaps on uses of Rolle’s texts in other late medieval literature.
Michael Van Dussen
Unmystical Rolle
Schneider 1135
The early fourteenth-century Yorkshire hermit, Richard Rolle, has long been known as one of the premier mystical writers of the English Middle Ages. He was positioned at the beginning of “the brilliant procession of English mystics” by Evelyn Underhill (1911), a reputation supported by the early publication of Incendium Amoris, the most substantial account of his mystical experiences, by Margaret Deanesly (1915). This view of Rolle as primarily a mystical author is supported, more recently, in Nicholas Watson’s influential literary biography, Richard Rolle and the Invention of Authority (1991), where his less obviously mystical works are positioned early in Rolle’s career, thereby made explicable as juvenilia beyond which the mystic quickly moved. This session aims to balance this longstanding emphasis by attending instead to what might be called, roughly, Rolle’s unmystical works (in English and in Latin)––derivative pieces, dull tracts, boring bits of exegesis, rigidly programmatic writings, etc. How might devoting more sustained attention to these works change our understanding of this important English author, of his appeal to medieval readers, and perhaps even of the chronology of his writings that Watson proposed? Papers should focus on individual writings or groups of writings by (or attributed to) Rolle, on case studies of manuscripts containing his works, or perhaps on uses of Rolle’s texts in other late medieval literature.
Michael Van Dussen