Biblical Commentary and Translation in Later Medieval England

Experiments in Interpretation

Andrew Kraebel

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781108486644
• eBook ISBN:
  9781108786744
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Drawing extensively on unpublished manuscript sources, this study uncovers the culture of experimentation that surrounded biblical exegesis in fourteenth-century England. In an area ripe for revision, Andrew Kraebel challenges the accepted theory (inherited from Reformation writers) that medieval English Bible translations represent a proto-Protestant rejection of scholastic modes of interpretation. Instead, he argues that early translators were themselves part of a larger scholastic interpretive tradition, and that they tried to make that tradition available to a broader audience. Translation was thus one among many ways that English exegetes experimented with the possibilities of commentary. With a wide scope, the book focuses on works by writers from the heretic John Wyclif to the hermit Richard Rolle, alongside a host of lesser-known authors, including Henry Cossey and Nicholas Trevet, and many anonymous texts. The study provides new insight into the ingenuity of medieval interpreters willing to develop new literary-critical methods and embrace intellectual risks.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title
• Series information
• Title page
• Copyright information
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations and Conventions
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Interpretive Theories and Traditions
• Chapter 2 Eclectic Hermeneutics: Biblical Commentary in Wyclif's Oxford
• Chapter 3 Richard Rolle's Scholarly Devotion
• Chapter 4 Moral Experiments: Middle English Matthew Commentaries
• Epilogue: John Bale's Dilemma
• Appendix A Subject Matter Symbols in Wyclif's Postils
• Appendix B The Texts and Revisions of Rolle's Latin Psalter
• Appendix C The Durham Matthew Prologue
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index of Manuscripts
• General Index