دانلود کتاب Mary’s Book: The Annunciation in Medieval England

Twelve sparse New Testament verses—Luke 1:26–38—are all that we have describing the Annunciation to the Virgin Mary. In this scene, the angel Gabriel appears to Mary and announces that she will conceive in her womb, “and bring forth a son, and call his name Jesus.” This is the Incarnation, the pivotal moment in the Christian story when the great chasm between divine and mortal is bridged by a profound paradox: God made man, Word made flesh (verbum caro factum est, John 1:14). In textual and visual representations of this scene Mary is almost always depicted reading. This project explores the most prominent model of female literacy in the Middle Ages: the Virgin Mary at the Annunciation. My project, the first book-length consideration of the Annunciation in the medieval religious imagination, explores the reasons behind the success of the image of Mary's book and argues for the profound significance of Mary as a model of literate devotion. I demonstrate that when Mary reads the prophecies foretelling the conception of Christ, her reading was often seen as an act of interpretation powerful enough to parallel the Incarnation, the transformation of the Word of God into flesh. This act, in turn, offered medieval audiences—particularly female audiences—much more than a pious ideal. The Mother of God became a hermeneutic model of conception: physical, spiritual, and intellectual.

With a special focus on the religious literature of medieval England, my project weaves together Latin and vernacular writings, liturgy, and art to present an interdisciplinary study of this pivotal scene. After tracing Mary's book from its earliest origins, I prove that as the cult of the Virgin grew and the options for female religious life proliferated in the twelfth century, so did the image of Mary's book. Examining texts such as Goscelin of St. Bertin's Liber confortatorius; Christina of Markyate's Vita and her book, the St. Albans Psalter; the anonymous Middle English Ancrene Wisse; and Aelred of Rievaulx's De Institution inclusarum —all centered on women enclosed as nuns or recluses—I explore how Mary's reading functioned as the foremost model of female literary devotion for solitary enclosed women. For holy women Elizabeth of Toss, Bridget of Sweden, Julian of Norwich, and Margery Kempe, visions of the Annunciation scene not only enabled their self-conception of a visionary identity but also deployed a discourse of motherhood to help facilitate their authorship. “Mary's Book” draws upon topics that currently propel the field of Middle English studies—vernacular theology, the gendered reader, and the history of the book—while it tackles head-on the difficult questions surrounding the subtle processes of medieval reading and prayer. I argue for the vital importance of this scene to our understanding of the devotional landscape of the Middle Ages, and the centrality of the image of the book to the scene's semiotic functionality. This dissertation's conclusions, however, will resonate widely with scholars working in various cultures and time periods who seek to explore patterns of female literacy, the Virgin Mary's role in Catholic societies, and women's positions in religious cultures.