Performative Religious Reading in the Low Countries (c. 1470-1550)

Joanka van der Laan

Pages: approx. 420 p.
Size:156 x 234 mm
Illustrations:60 b/w, 25 col.

Language(s):English
Publication Year:2025

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This study explores religious performative reading as a widespread practice in the Low Countries, which allowed lay men and women in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century to be active participants in religious culture.

Subject(s)

BIO

Joanka van der Laan obtained her PhD degree in 2020, as a member of the research project Cities of Readers: Religious Literacies in the Long Fifteenth Century, funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO), and led by prof. Sabrina Corbellini and prof. Bart Ramakers. She has conducted interdisciplinary research, presented results at international academic conferences, and published in the peer-reviewed journals Ons Geestelijk Erf and Queeste.

Summary

‘Use your imagination, visualize details, activate your emotions and employ your body.’ Late medieval devotional literature demanded readers to actively involve themselves in mental and/or physical performances, in which they were to take up the role of witness or even participant in the story. This practice of performative reading gives readers the opportunity to identify with Christ and grow in their spiritual life.
This monograph studies the variety of techniques in late medieval devotional books that help readers to engage in performative reading. The source material concerns mostly printed material produced in the Low Countries in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Challenging the persistent emphasis on the Reformation in research on the early sixteenth century, the results of this study reveal that older medieval devotional mechanisms continued to be enthusiastically embraced by ambitious, active lay men and women. The printing press ensured performative reading practices were widely disseminated, allowing the laity to actively participate in religious culture.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1. The Performance of Reading

1.1 Introduction
1.2 Devotional Reading
1.3 Sources
1.4 Methods and Structure of the Study

Chapter 2. Space

2.1 Introduction
2.2 Settings
2.3 The Stage of Reading
2.4 The Space of the Book Page
2.5 Spaces in Books: Narrative Settings
2.6 Appropriating Sacred Space
2.7 Conclusions

Chapter 3. Body

3.1 Introduction
3.2 Reading with the Body
3.3 Using the Body: Gestures, Postures, and Movement
3.4 Emotions
3.5 The Senses
3.6 Bridging the Experiential Gap
3.7 Conclusions

Chapter 4. Mind

4.1 Introduction
4.2 Imagination
4.3 Memory
4.4 Multimodal Reading
4.5 Materialising the Abstract: Allegory and Metaphor
4.6 Reading without the Book
4.7 Conclusions

Conclusions

Appendix: Primary Sources

Bibliography