Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Editorial conventions
- Notes on the text
- Sigla
- List of abbreviations
- Prolegomena
- Part I The Collections
- Part II Occasions of Preaching
- Part III Orthodox Preaching
- 46 An English theology
- 47 Preaching and the pastoral office
- 48 The word of God and pastoralia
- 49 The preacher's voice
- 50 Orthodox and heterodox
- Final reflections
- Inventories
- Works cited
- Index
49 - The preacher's voice
from Part III - Orthodox Preaching
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Editorial conventions
- Notes on the text
- Sigla
- List of abbreviations
- Prolegomena
- Part I The Collections
- Part II Occasions of Preaching
- Part III Orthodox Preaching
- 46 An English theology
- 47 Preaching and the pastoral office
- 48 The word of God and pastoralia
- 49 The preacher's voice
- 50 Orthodox and heterodox
- Final reflections
- Inventories
- Works cited
- Index
Summary
It has become customary to speak of late-medieval sermons as texts of unrelieved monotony and dullness. Here is how the pioneer of English sermon studies put it:
The same fatal influence of the past seems to creep onward through the discourse: the same allegorical turns of exposition, the same “figurae” from animals or things, the same old sayings of “the great clerks,” the same anecdotes, where anecdotes are to be found. The landscape is barren and monotonous … a decaying art … such tedious stuff.
And Owst is echoed by a more recent scholar speaking of
a startling unoriginality in most sermons, because there is no concern to offer experiences from the preacher's own life … Academic preaching is not an individualizing act, but one judged successful by the skillful manipulation of the rules of composition – the scissors-and-paste method …
Foolish though it may seem to look for some life in “these dry bones, that whiten the road,” I wish to argue that the collections surveyed here reveal that English preachers between 1350 and 1450 did in fact create works with an astonishing degree of variety and individuality, that hardly deserve the judgments just quoted. My argument will center on the choice preachers had in selecting the structure of their sermons as well as their verbal texture.
To illustrate this choice, sermons for the third Sunday in Lent will serve as a good case, whose gospel (Luke 11:14–28) tells of Jesus casting out a demon and then arguing with the crowd:
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Latin Sermon Collections from Later Medieval EnglandOrthodox Preaching in the Age of Wyclif, pp. 354 - 369Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005