Michael G. Sargent’s scholarship on late medieval English devotional literature has been hugely influential on the fields of Middle English literature, religious studies, and manuscript studies. His prolific work on a great range of English and French texts, including visionary writing, devotional guidance, and drama, devoting scrupulous attention to the physical forms in which these texts circulated, has established the scope and impact of religious writing across the social spectrum in England, enabling a nuanced understanding of the complex literary interactions between the cloister and the world.
The essays in this volume demonstrate and pay tribute to Sargent’s influence, extending and complementing his work on devotional texts and the books in which they traveled. The themes of translation, manuscript transmission and the varieties of devotional practice are to the fore. Inspired by Sargent’s work on Love’s Middle English translation of pseudo-Bonaventuran devotional texts, some chapters explore other Middle English translations within this tradition, considering the implications of translation strategies for shaping readers’ practices, while others examine Carthusian and Birgittine texts as they appear in new contexts, probing the continuing influence of these orders on devotional life and theological controversy. Whether looking at devotional guidance, visionary texts, or hagiography, each contribution works closely with texts in their material contexts, always considering a question central to Sargent’s scholarship: how texts gain distinct cultural meanings within particular circumstances of copying, transmission and ownership.