ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on how medieval reading practices defy the fixity of sense that modern readers often assume in their own practice. Anne Mouron examines the way in which text and image interact within manuscripts of The Desert of Religion, a mid-fifteenth-century Middle English devotional text. All three extant copies are accompanied by images, but here Mouron focuses on London, British Library, MS Additional 37049. Mouron argues that the images across this manuscript work as a series, encouraging its readers to engage with text and image in a meditative manner that echoes the monastic practice of lectio divina. Such slow repetitive reading feeds into both oratio (prayer) and meditatio (meditation) – the ultimate goal being contemplatio, that is, a contemplative or mystical encounter with God. Yet Mouron notes that despite this, rather than being otherworldly, the author of The Desert of Religion attempts to engage the reader’s entire sensorium: the reader not only sees an image but engages with it affectively, and on multiple levels. Mouron’s study highlights the importance of the non-linear nature of late medieval devotional reading practices, moving to-and-fro within a text, demanding of the reader ever more intricate associative engagements with the material.
