The Medieval Poetics of the Reliquary: Enshrinement, Inscription, Performance (The New Middle Ages)

Reliquaries, elaborate containers housing the remains of the holy dead, informed numerous aspects of medieval culture. Incorporated into religious ceremonies, they contributed to the voiced, world-creating work of performance. At the same time, their decoration often included inscription, silent and self-referential. In the reliquary, silent inscription and spoken performance enshrined one another to produce a visual language about representation. Using texts by Chaucer, along with anonymous plays, lyrics, and hagiographic verse, The Medieval Poetics of the Reliquary shows how the reliquarys visual language explicated the representational processes of late-medieval English poetry. Through Interdisciplinary Readings Of Medieval Literature And Devotional Artifacts, The Medieval Poetics Of The Reliquary Shows How Reliquaries Shaped Ideas About Poetry And Poetics In Late-medieval England. The Poetics Of Enshrinement -- Silent Inscription, Spoken Ceremony : Saint Erkenwald And The Enshrined Judge -- The N-town Assumption's Impossible Reliquary -- Enshrining Form : Pearl As Inscriptional Object And Devotional Event -- Reliquaries Of The Mind : Figuration, Enshrinement, And Performance In The Pardoner's Tale. Seeta Chaganti. Originally Presented As The Author's Thesis (ph. D.)--yale University, 2001. Includes Bibliographical References (p. [211]-230) And Index.