Biblical Commentary and Translation in Later Medieval England

Drawing extensively on unpublished manuscript sources, this study uncovers the culture of experimentation that surrounded biblical exegesis in fourteenth-century England.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.

Author: Andrew Kraebel
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 03/05/2020
Pages: 322
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.30lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.40w x 0.70d
ISBN: 9781108486644

Review Citation(s):
Choice 04/01/2021

About the Author
Kraebel, Andrew: - Andrew Kraebel is Assistant Professor of English at Trinity University, Texas. His essays on medieval literature and commentary have appeared in Speculum, JMEMS, and Traditio, among other journals, as well as in such volumes as Interpreting Scripture in Judaism, Christianity and Islam: Overlapping Inquiries (Cambridge, 2016) and The Cambridge Handbook of Literary Authorship (Cambridge, forthcoming). He is the editor of the Sermons of William of Newburgh (2010), and, with Ardis Butterfield and Ian Johnson, he is editing a collection of essays on Literary Theory and Criticism in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, forthcoming).