This dissertation is a study of spatial allegorical representations of inwardness in late medieval devotional texts of the fourteenth and fifteenth century, with a focus on the topos of the garden of the contemplation of the Passion as a landscape of the heart. These representations of the self do not follow the temporal logic of autobiography but are instead organized around matrix spaces: architectures or gardens of inwardness. Named by Beaujour in opposition to life-narratives, these miroirs d’encre or literary self-portraits rely on topoï to express the most intimate contours of the individual. The first part of this dissertation considers how identity is negotiated with respect to the devotional norm in two private devotional exercises penned by cultured aristocrats. The abject vision of the penitential self in Henry of Lancaster’s Livre des Seyntz Medicines is rooted in the requirement to describe a deep self ontologically opaque to consciousness, while in René d’Anjou’s Mortifiement de Vaine Plaisance, the sinfulness lodged in the heart is considered through the lens of an anthropology focused on affect. Because of their intertextual nature, locative tropes of interiority constitute an arena in which the individual constitutes himself in relation to foundational texts. Topical representations of the self borrow their form from the setting of a particular text or reference an entire textual tradition, inviting the question of the role of reading practices in self formation. The second part of this dissertation focuses on reading as a spiritual exercise, considering how the literary setting of the Roman de la Rose came to be associated to a devotional representation of the self in the late Middle Ages. In response to the debates on language and allegoresis unfurling in the Quarrel of the Rose, Pierre d’Ailly transforms its garden into an inner Jardin Amoureux de l’Ame Devote, subjecting the infamous secular text to a reading inspired by devotional meditative reading practices. Later on, Jehan Henri mobilizes the topography of the Rose to describe the collective identity of reformed nuns in a series of texts promoting the agenda of monastic reformation ( Le Livre de réformation utile et profitable pour toutes religieuses, Livre de la vie active and the Jardin de Contemplation). Finally, Molinet’s Roman de la Rose Moralisé proposes a spiritual reading of the Rose that testifies to a paradigm shift in the status of secular literature under the influence of devotional reading modes, and which, like Pierre d’Ailly, assimilates the setting of the Rose to an inner garden of the contemplation of the Passion. No longer an innocuous pastime, literature comes to carry high societal stakes because of being invested with a definite role in self-fashioning. The race for controlling the meaning of foundational texts leads to the proliferation of late medieval literary quarrels. An edition of Jehan Henri’s Jardin de Contemplation is provided in the appendix.

Catholic writers traditionally approach the laity through the sacraments rather than the Word. Nonetheless, three devotional genres - meditation, hagiography and catechism - recognize that effective written appeals to a reader can be made using rhetoric. This thesis analyses such rhetoric, in recusant devotional texts published by secret presses between 1580 and 1603. Most detailed examinations of Catholic works think of rhetoric as emasculating the virile yet chaste prose of a 'shining band of martyrs'. This thesis proposes that the rules of rhetoric are used to empower the reader of these works by Grafting a new character in him. Meditations act as deliberative orations, swaying the reader's will. They use amplificatio and memoria to produce matter and to dwell on it. Late sixteenth-century translations of continental meditation manuals by Granada, Scupoli, Estella and Loarte provide a theory of meditation for the English works studied: rosary texts by John Bucke, Thomas Worthington and Henry Garnet; several anonymous collections of meditations and prayers; contemplations on Scriptural stories by Robert Southwell, I.C., C.N. and Robert Chambers. In the second section, saints' lives are read as rhetorical examples which support this deliberative discourse, rather than as blazons, innocent of intent on the reader. Hagiographies by Worthington, Robert Persons, William Alien and Thorns Alfield reflect images of what a martyr or saint should do, not what he did. The last chapters show how catechisms recreate these idealized images in the reader by acting as dramatic scripts for him. Repetition through rhetoric dissolves the element of theatre, allowing the reader to absorb these rules for life. Once again, Elizabethan translations of foreign catechisms by Granada, Bellarmine and Canisius are used to illuminate English catechisms by Persons, Southwell and Lawrence Vaux.

Thesis (M.C.S.)--Regent College, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 94-95).

Akademisk avhandling--Lund. / "Kallor och litteratur": p. 410-438.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1963. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 259-275).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Rutgers University, 2008. / "Graduate Program in Literatures in English." Includes bibliographical references (p. 219-234).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Notre Dame, 2006. / Thesis directed by Jill Mann and Jesse Lander for the Department of English. "November 2006." "This dissertation provides a new edition of the Mirror to Devout People, which survives in two manuscripts: Notre Dame, Indiana, University of Notre Dame, MS 67 (ND) and Cambridge, University Library, MS Gg.1.6 (C)"--Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 324-335) and index.

Thesis (M.C.S.)--Regent College, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 94-95).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 1987. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 261-285).

Akademisk avhandling--Lund. / "Kallor och litteratur": p. 410-438.