Richard Rolle and the Invention of Authority

by Nicholas Watson

• ISBN13: 9780521033152
• ISBN10: 0521033152
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-02-26
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This is a literary study of the career of Richard Rolle (d. 1349), a Yorkshire hermit and mystic who was one of the most widely read English writers of the late Middle Ages. Nicholas Watson proposes a new chronology of Rolle's writings, and offers the first literary analyses of a number of his works. He shows how Rolle's career, as a writer of passionate religious works in Latin and later in English, has as its principal focus the establishment of his own spiritual authority. The book also addresses wider issues, suggesting a new way of looking at mystical writing in general and challenging the prevailing view of the relationship between medieval and renaissance attitudes to authors and authority.

Table of Contents

Preface

List of abbreviations

Introduction - contexts: three preliminary essays

Interpreting Rolle-s life

The structure of Rolle-s thought

Active life: Judica Me as apologetic pastoral

Contemplative life, -Seeing into Heaven-: commentaries and Canticum Amoris

Contemplative life, Fervor: Incendium Amoris

Contemplative life, Dulcor: Super Psalmum Vicesimum, Super Canticum Canticorum, Contra Amatores Mundi

Contemplative life, Canor: Melos Amoris

-Mixed- life: Super Lectiones Mortuorum and Emendatio Vitae

-Mixed- life: the English works

Epilogue: Rolle as a late medieval Auctor

Excursus I: the chronology of Rolle-s writings

Excursus II: Rolle-s reading and the reliability of the Officium

Notes

Bibliography

Index

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