New Directions in Medieval Mystical and Devotional Literature

Essays in Honor of Denise N. Baker

New Directions in Medieval Mystical and Devotional Literature honors the career and scholarship of Denise N. Baker. Contributors include both early career and established scholars, and the collected essays examine a broad range of medieval mystical and religious literature, such as the writings of Julian of Norwich and William Langland.

This essay collection is gathered on the occasion of the retirement of Denise N. Baker, Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. New Directions in Medieval Mystical and Devotional Literature draws together the work of young and early career scholars who have worked with Baker as students as well as peers who have published her work, contributed to collections Baker has edited, and have been inspired and influenced by her wide-ranging and important scholarship over the past four decades. This collection includes studies of the wide variety of the texts and topics that have been the subject of Baker’s scholarly work, from the importance of philosophical and intellectual history in Julian of Norwich’s Showings and Langland’s Piers Plowman, to the gendered nature of martyrdom in medieval hagiography, to the preoccupation of architectural memorialization in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. These essays bridge the often wide gap between scholarship on medieval mystical texts, such as the writings of Julian of Norwich and the Cloud of Unknowing author, and scholarship on the work of major medieval vernacular authors such William Langland and Geoffrey Chaucer.