Tropologies

Ryan Mcdermott

Description

Tropologies is the first book-length study to elaborate the medieval and early modern theory of the tropological, or moral, sense of scripture. Ryan McDermott argues that tropology is not only a way to interpret the Bible but also a theory of literary and ethical invention. The “tropological imperative” demands that words be turned into works—books as well as deeds. Beginning with Augustine, Jerome, and Gregory the Great, then treating monuments of exegesis such as the Glossa ordinaria and Nicholas of Lyra, as well as theorists including Thomas Aquinas, Erasmus, Martin Luther, and others, Tropologies reveals the unwritten history of a major hermeneutical theory and inventive practice. Late medieval and early Reformation writers adapted tropological theory to invent new biblical poetry and drama that would invite readers to participate in salvation history by inventing their own new works. Tropologies reinterprets a wide range of medieval and early modern texts and performances—including the Patience-Poet, Piers Plowman, Chaucer, the York and Coventry cycle plays, and the literary circles of the reformist King Edward VI—to argue that “tropological invention” provided a robust alternative to rhetorical theories of literary production. In this groundbreaking revision of literary history, the Bible and biblical hermeneutics, commonly understood as sources of tumultuous discord, turn out to provide principles of continuity and mutuality across the Reformation’s temporal and confessional rifts. Each chapter pursues an argument about poetic and dramatic form, linking questions of style and aesthetics to exegetical theory and theology. Because Tropologies attends to the flux of exegetical theory and practice across a watershed period of intellectual history, it is able to register subtle shifts in literary production, fine-tuning our sense of how literature and religion mutually and dynamically informed and reformed each other.

Sujets

• Comparative Literature
• Literary Criticism
• Medieval
• Colegio Mayor Universitario Santo Tomás de Aquino
• Martín Lutero
• Edad Media
• Thomas Aquinas
• Pope Gregory I
• Middle Ages
• Jerome
• Desiderius Erasmus
• Christianity
• Augustine of Hippo
• Augustine
• Erasmus
• Martin Luther
• Renaissance
• Bible

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 15 avril 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268087098
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

TROPOLOGIES
ReFormations
MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN
Series Editors: David Aers, Sarah Beckwith, and James Simpson
RECENT TITLES IN THE SERIES
Against All England: Regional Identity and Cheshire Writing, 1195-1656 (2009) Robert W. Barrett, Jr.
The Maudlin Impression: English Literary Images of Mary Magdalene, 1550-1700 (2009) Patricia Badir
The Embodied Word: Female Spiritualities, Contested Orthodoxies, and English Religious Cultures, 1350-1700 (2010) Nancy Bradley Warren
The Island Garden: England s Language of Nation from Gildas to Marvell (2012) Lynn Staley
Miserere Mei: The Penitential Psalms in Late Medieval and Early Modern England (2012) Claire Costley King oo
The English Martyr from Reformation to Revolution (2012) Alice Dailey
Transforming Work: Early Modern Pastoral and Late Medieval Poetry (2013) Katherine C. Little
Writing Faith and Telling Tales: Literature, Politics, and Religion in the Work of Thomas More (2013) Thomas Betteridge
Unwritten Verities: The Making of England s Vernacular Legal Culture, 1463-1549 (2015) Sebastian Sobecki
Mysticism and Reform, 1400-1750 (2015) Sara S. Poor and Nigel Smith, eds.
The Civic Cycles: Artisan Drama and Identity in Premodern England (2015) Nicole R. Rice and Margaret Aziza Pappano
RYAN McDERMOTT
TROPOLOGIES
ETHICS AND INVENTION IN ENGLAND, C. 1350 - 1600
UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME PRESS
NOTRE DAME, INDIANA
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
www.undpress.nd.edu
Copyright 2016 by University of Notre Dame
All Rights Reserved
Published in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: McDermott, Ryan, 1978- author.
Title: Tropologies : ethics and invention in England, c. 1350-1600 / Ryan McDermott.
Other titles: Ethics and invention in England, c. 1350-1600
Description: Notre Dame, Indiana : University of Notre Dame Press, 2016. | Series: ReFormations : medieval and early modern | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016004189| ISBN 9780268035402 (paperback) | ISBN 0268035407 (paper)
Subjects: LCSH: English literature-Middle English, 1100-1500-History and criticism. | English literature-Early modern, 1500-1700-History and criticism. | Bible-Criticism, interpretation, etc.-History. | Bible-Influence. | Bible-In literature. | Bible and literature. | Ethics in literature. | Religion and literature. | BISAC: LITERARY CRITICISM / Medieval. | LITERARY CRITICISM / Renaissance.
Classification: LCC PR275.B5 M33 2016 | DDC 820.9/3823-dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016004189
ISBN 9780268087098
This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper ).
This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at [e-mail] .
For my father ,
GERALD MCDERMOTT,
who dared me to think, and then taught me the difference between thinking and writing .
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Tropological Theory
2 How to Invent History: Patience , the Glossa ordinaria , and the Ethics of the Literal Sense
3 Beatus qui verba vertit in opera : Langland s Ethical Invention
4 Practices of Satisfaction and Piers Plowman s Dynamic Middle
5 Tropology Reformed: Scripture, Salvation, Drama
6 Mirror of Scripture: Ethics and Anagogy in the York Doomsday Pageant
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
Illustrations
Fig. 1.1 .
Detail of October, Les tr s riches heures du duc de Berry . Chantilly, Mus e Cond MS 65, fol. 10v. Reprinted by kind permission of RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY .
Fig. 1.2 .
Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Digby 171, title page. Reprinted by kind permission of The Bodleian Libraries, The University of Oxford .
Fig. 2.1 .
Biblia pauperum , London, British Library, Kings MS 5 (Netherlands, c. 1405), fol. 20, detail. Reprinted under a Creative Commons license by the kind permission of The British Library . http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/ .
Fig. 2.2 .
Translation of the first page of the Glossa ordinaria on Jonah set in modern typeface, emulating the Rusch 1480/81 editio princeps . Originally published in McDermott, The Ordinary Gloss on Jonah.
Fig. 6.1 .
Christ displays his wounds at the Last Judgment. York Minster, MS XVI.K.19, fol. 31r. Chapter of York: Reproduced by kind permission .
Fig. 6.2 .
Christ judges the good and the evil souls on Doomsday. York Minster, MS Add. 2, fol. 208r. Chapter of York: Reproduced by kind permission .
Fig. 6.3 .
New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, MS Morgan 1089, fol. 118v. Northern Italy, possibly the Veneto, c. 1425-1450. Reprinted by kind permission. Photo: The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York .
Fig. 6.4 .
John Foxe, Actes and Monuments (London: John Day, 1563). Oxford, Magdalen College, Old Library, Arch.B.I.4.13. Title page of the first edition. Reprinted by kind permission of the President and Fellows of Magdalen College Oxford .
Acknowledgments
This book is the result of a natural tropology. The words and deeds of many people are here converted into a work that would be impossible without their prior acts of invention, and it is a delight to be able to express my gratitude.
I have been fortunate to write this book in intellectual communities that are at once peaceful and critical, nurturing and emboldening. At the University of Pittsburgh, Hannah Johnson and Jennifer Waldron have thought through every phase of this project with me. Pitt has a strong culture of collegial mentoring. I am particularly grateful for the friendship, advice, and example of Jonathan Arac, Don Bialostosky, Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Nancy Glazener, Jim Knapp, Dennis Looney, Marianne Novy, Chris Nygren, Gayle Rogers, Johnny Twyning, and Bruce Venarde at Pitt, and to Peggy Knapp across the bridge at Carnegie Mellon. At the University of Virginia, I enjoyed the inspiring dissertation guidance of A. C. Spearing, Kevin Hart, and Peter Ochs. As director of the thesis that eventually grew into this book, Bruce Holsinger taught me how to work across disciplines and has always been there for savvy professional advice. Many of the initial ideas for this book emerged in the last seminar taught by the late Barbara Nolan, on the ethical Chaucer. I am sorry that she could not have been involved in the project that grew out of expansive discussions in class and her generously leisurely office hours. I wrote my dissertation in the invigorating interdisciplinary community of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. At Duke Divinity School, Boyd Taylor Coolman introduced me to the wonders of medieval exegesis, and Reinhard H tter opened my eyes to the timeliness of premodern philosophy and theology.
This book has benefited from the countless attentions, large and small, of many colleagues beyond those institutions. Cristina Maria Cervone has read every part of the book, at nearly every stage (even the many stages that did not make it into the book); her large- and small-scale contributions have improved every page. Andrew Cole, Rachael Deagman, Michelle De Groot, Ashley Faulkner, Chris Hackett, Eleanor Johnson, Billy Junker, Steven Justice, David Lavinsky, Allan Mitchell, Mary Raschko, Jennifer Rust, and Macklin Smith read substantial parts of the manuscript at critical junctures. Ann Astell, John Bugbee, Theresa Coletti, Ed Craun, Kantik Ghosh, Gabriel Haley, Ralph Hanna, Jeanne Krochalis, Alastair Minnis, Peter Ramey, Will Revere, Jennifer Rust, Kurt Schreyer, Vance Smith, Fiona Somerset, Beth Sutherland, Nicholas Watson, Nicolette Zeeman, and the participants in the seminar on Drama, Phenomenology, and Periodization at the 49th International Congress on Medieval Studies all responded to parts of the book and made it much better. Nina Appasamy and Zachary Herbster, rare multilingual undergraduate research assistants, contributed to the bibliography and checking of foreign-language quotations. Many other colleagues and students, too many to name here, contributed in countless other ways; without the intellectual community they created, a book like this would not be possible. All errors and infelicities are surely my own.
Along the way I have been fortunate to receive the support of the James B. Skinner Scholarship of St. Paul s Episcopal Church (Charlottesville, VA), the Dolores Zohrab Liebmann Foundation, and the Harvey Fellows Program. At the University of Pittsburgh my research has been supported by grants from the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences Central Research Development Fund, the University Center for International Studies, and the Department of English. The Richard D. and Mary Jane Edwards Endowed Publication Fund made it possible to reprint images and to produce the book with footnotes. The Hillman Library s area specialists for English and medieval and early modern studies, Robin Kear and Clare Withers, have been unfailingly solicitous and inventive during a period of difficult financial constraints; I have not wanted for any resource.
The University of Notre Dame Press has been a delight to work with. Stephen Little and Rebecca DeBoer deserve particular thanks for their cheerful collaboration and sound advice. By inventing this ReFormations series, David Aers, Sarah Beckwith, and James Simpson inspired the present volume, which should be a testament to the intellectual power of the often tedious task of editing a book series.
Introduction
Tropological discour