Spaces for Reading in Later Medieval England

Essayists in this collection break down the vital relationship between reading and space in medieval culture. A variety of approaches are employed to discuss the topic including literary analysis and contemporary film and architectural theory, in turn, complicating the notion of the stable, fixed text and reader.

We are living in an age in which the relationship between reading and space is evolving swiftly. Cutting-edge technologies and developments in the publication and consumption of literature continue to uncover new physical, electronic, and virtual contexts in which reading can take place. In comparison with the accessibility that has accompanied these developments, the medieval reading experience may initially seem limited and restrictive, available only to a literate few or to their listeners; yet attention to the spaces in which medieval reading habits can be traced reveals a far more vibrant picture in which different kinds of spaces provided opportunities for a wide range of interactions with and contributions to the texts being read. Drawing on a rich variety of material, this collection of essays demonstrates that the spaces in which reading took place (or in which reading could take place) in later medieval England directly influenced how and why reading happened.

Introduction; Mary C. Flannery and Carrie Griffin
1. "Thys ys my boke": Imagining the Owner in the Book; Daniel Wakelin
2. Reading John Walton's Boethius in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries; A. S. G. Edwards
3. Reading in London in 1501: A Micro-Study; Julia Boffey
4. Not For Profit: 'Amateur' Readers of French Poetry in Late Medieval England; Stephanie Downes
5. Playing Space: Reading Dramatic Title-Pages in Early Printed Plays; Tamara Atkin
6. Navigation by Tab and Thread: Place-Markers and Readers' Movement in Books; Daniel Sawyer
7. Reading Without Books; Katie L. Walter
8. "[W]heþyr þu redist er herist redyng, I wil be plesyd wyth þe": Margery Kempe and the Locations for Middle English Devotional Reading and Hearing; Ryan Perry and Lawrence Tuck
9. Privy Reading; Mary C. Flannery
10. Mapping the Readable Household; Heather Blatt