Still small voice: Silence in medieval English devotion and literature

My dissertation examines how Old and Middle English literary texts represented devotional silence, which pervaded not only monastic life but also the liturgy, the most sacred parts of which the priest whispered inaudibly to keep them secret from lay worshippers. Critical attention to these silences not only affords insight into medieval devotional practices but also discloses the interplay of individual and institutional power that emerged in devotional arenas. In monastic houses and the liturgy, silence was a venue through which the church exercised its power, disciplined religious subjects, and safeguarded knowledge. Portraits of devotional silence in medieval literature reflect their orthodox contexts and thus demonstrate how institutional power infused the individual's aural and vocal experience of worship. In these medieval texts, however, religious subjects are also use silence to challenge church authority, subvert clerical power, and engage in private exchanges with the divine. Literary works that attest to the practical effects of silence not only disclose the workings of hierarchical power but also offer insights into medieval conceptions of the voice's power.; The influence of monastic silence on the dissemination of religious texts is apparent in Old English texts that describe mute beings breaking into speech. These works reflect an Anglo-Saxon cultural investment in the material production and performative re-production of written texts, whose "silent" words stand primed for reiteration by the reader. Given that the words in these religious texts ultimately derive from God, reading is thus a ventriloqual act in which the reader voices the words of an absent, silent God. My study of Middle English literature focuses on texts that juxtapose Eucharistic secrets alongside profane secrets. These portraits of liturgical silence question the capability of human language to render divine secrets and also critique clerical privilege to sacred knowledge. My project, engaged with postmodern reading strategies designed to recover textual silences, ultimately examines how silence structured religious discourse within and outside of devotional settings. I show that silence provides a critical vantage point for observing how medieval subjects participated in hierarchical power relationships as well as individual divine discourse.