Theatre of the Mind: Devotional Performance in British Library MS Stowe 39

I examine the relationship between picture and text in the fifteenth-century Middle English devotional volume, British Library Manuscript Stowe 39. While Stowe 39 has been previously understood as compiled for religious audiences, I consider textual and historical evidence in order to propose that it may have been owned by the laity, specifically women who desired the same level of religious status as monastics. Through my close examination of the illustrations which accompany the two main texts, The Abbey of the Holy Ghost and The Desert of Religion, I argue that the female layreader was able to individually intensify her relationship with God through a deeply embodied, performative practice of devotion.