Description
About the Author
LAURA SAETVEIT MILES is professor of British Literature at the Department of Foreign Languages, University of Bergen, Norway.
Reviews
The book is thought-provoking and a delight for visually oriented readers. The book would be most beneficial to those with academic backgrounds in religious art, spirituality, and mysticism. * MAGISTRA *
Miles's book is an interesting, thought-provoking, and informative investigation that relies on a variety of sources in order to shed light on the role of the book of Mary in medieval England. * Journal of British Studies *
This is a brilliantly conceived volume. Combining literary analysis, historical reconstruction, and feminist enquiry, Miles (English, Univ. of Bergen, Norway) finds in literary and artistic depictions of the Annunciation-from the early Middle Ages until the Reformation-a prompt for women's identification with the literate virgin who reads and interprets texts (including the Psalms and Isaiah), prays, predicts, sings, meditates, and contemplates and so creates her own meaning. Highly Recommended. * CHOICE *
This is a wide-ranging and penetrative study that will remain important to scholarship - and feminist scholarship, in particular - for some considerable time. It will provide a turn-to work for anybody interested in this highly visible and deeply arresting image of a pre-modern woman engaging in an act of private reading. * Speculum *
Throughout the book, each aspect of the Annunciation is meticulously examined from a body of texts, the choice of which, systematically justified by Miles, reveals the work of an informed researcher. * Revue d'Histoire Ecclesiastique *
The volume's production quality is superb [...] Miles' methodology is genuinely exciting, and this book demonstrates what a historically and theologically literate literary criticism can achieve. * International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church *
Miles builds a longitudinal study of Mary- as- reader that is also a deep dive into how medieval readers learned to pray meditatively. While Miles's book is valuable for attending to this form of imitatio Mariae, it also models an interpretation of medieval meditative practices useful to other approaches to devotional culture. * Studies in the Age of Chaucer *
Laura Saetveit Miles has set about her work with concentrated earnestness and refreshing enthusiasm. -- Journal of Ecclesiastical History
Riveting...The book is thought-provoking and a delight for visually oriented readers. * AVE *
Book Information
ISBN 9781843846284
Author Professor Laura Saetveit Miles
Format Paperback
Page Count 318
Imprint D.S. Brewer
Publisher Boydell & Brewer Ltd