Participatory Reading in Late-Medieval England

Heather Blatt is Associate Professor of English Literature at Florida International University

'I was impressed overall with Blatt's well written and thoughtful volume, seeing familiar texts in new ways and intrigued by ones that I did not know. It will be useful to scholars of Middle English both inside and outside of Digital Humanities.'TMR'Participatory Reading offers innovative contexts in which to understand late medieval writing; these are questions we absolutely should be thinking about, and Blatt’s intervention is an important one… the ideas here will no doubt influence how we continue to think and write about late medieval literary culture, and I very much look forward to seeing how this book shapes the ensuing conversation.'Studies in the Age of Chaucer'Its foregrounding of participation makes it a worthy addition to the scholarly literature on reading practices.' Archiv

• Introduction: participatory reading in late-medieval EnglandPart I: Participatory discourse1 Corrective reading: Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde and John Lydgate’s Troy Book2 Nonlinear reading: the Orcherd of Syon, Titus and Vespasian, and Lydgate’s Siege of ThebesPart II: Evoking participation3 Reading materially: John Lydgate’s ‘Soteltes for the coronation banquet of Henry VI’4 Reading architecturally: the wall texts of a Percy family manuscript and the Poulys Daunce of St. Paul’s Cathedral5 Reading temporally: Thomas of Erceldoune’s prophecy, Eleanor Hull’s Commentary on the Psalms, and Thomas Norton’s Ordinal of alchemyConclusion: nonreading in late-medieval EnglandIndex