Walsingham in Literature and Culture from the Middle Ages to Modernity

Dominic Janes is a Lecturer in Art History at Birkbeck College, University of London, UK. Gary Waller is Professor of Literature and Cultural Studies in the School of Humanities at Purchase College, State University of New York, USA.

' ... a breadth and depth which could mean [the book] has a wide appeal to different people. [...]One of the fascinating things I reflected on whilst reading this book was how secular it feels. For the first time I was reading a volume which was about the social history of this particular place rather than focusing on its intrinsic spirituality.' New Directions 'Perhaps the greatest strength of the book is that it tries to encompass so many different areas of study and theoretical commitments within the study of this one medieval English pilgrimage shrine. In few other books would one find sexuality studies alongside art historical approaches to pilgrim badges, or music and memory studies alongside considerations of the construction of the modern shrine and Walsingham’s shadow across early modern literature and discussions of place and Tudor strengths.' Sixteenth Century Journal

• Contents: Preface; Introduction: Walsingham, landscape, sexuality, and cultural memory, Dominic Janes and Gary Waller. Part I Landscape and the Sacred: Walsingham's local genius: Norfolk's 'newe Nazareth', Stella A. Singer; Pilgrimage at Walsingham on the eve of the Reformation: speculations on a 'splendid diversity' only dimly perceived, Michael P. Carroll; Waste space: pilgrim badges, Ophelia, and Walsingham remembered, Susan Signe Morrison; From the Holy Family to the Sidney and Lee-Warner families: the Protestantization of Walsingham, Gary Waller; Engaging visions? Sites and sights in contemporary pilgrimage to Walsingham, Simon Coleman. Part II The Body and Sexuality: St Anne and her Walsingham daughter, Carole Hill; The Virgin's 'pryvytes': Walsingham and the late medieval sexualization of the Virgin, Gary Waller; Walsingham and inter-war Anglo-Catholicism, Nigel Yates; Queer Walsingham, Dominic Janes. Part III Cultural Memory: Architecture, Literature, Music: Walsingham and the architecture of English history, John Twyning; Return of the Sacred Virgin: memory, loss, and restoration in Shakespeare's later plays, Susan Dunn-Hensley; 'Bare ruin'd quires, where late the sweet birds sang': covert speech in William Byrd's 'Walsingham' variations, Bradley Brookshire; 'Met I with an old bald mare': lust, misogyny, and the early modern Walsingham ballads, Alison A. Chapman; The poetics of incarnation: T.S. Eliot's 'shrine' and Robert Lowell's Walsingham, Barry Spurr; Select bibliography; Index.