Medieval Devotional Texts: Technologies Old and New 

https://medievaldevotionaltexts.wordpress.com/

Devotional texts, texts that are intended to encourage prayer, spiritual reflection or contemplation, dwell at the intersections between the literary, the historical and the theological. As one example, a prayer can be a lyric, an essential component of liturgy, or a personal text expressing the reader’s specific hopes and fears. It can stand alone or form part of competing networks of intertextuality, accommodating a wide range of different readings and significant contexts. While devotional texts may appear formulaic in that they are often characterised by formal qualities and constrained by the expectations of genre, the distinctive features of these texts also allow them to remain recognisable even as they are adapted to the demands of new reading communities and new media.

We welcome papers addressing early and late medieval devotional genres or texts alongside the technologies employed in their creation, transmission and use. Correspondingly, we are also interested in papers discussing digital approaches to studying the production and reception of these texts.

Abstracts are invited from researchers working in literary and related fields addressing any of the following topics:

manuscript studies

textual transmission

devotional texts and material culture

the place of devotional texts in miscellanies

confessional practice

prayer collections and compilations

digital approaches to devotional texts in medieval literature

Please send a 300-word abstract for a 25-minute paper to Sheri Smith at smiths@uni-duesseldorf.de by 1st February 2019. We will be confirming participation by February 7th. We particularly welcome papers from graduate students and early career scholars and will cover the cost of one night of accommodation at our conference venue Schloss Mickeln for all speakers.