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

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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 reliquaryx2019;s visual language explicated the representational processes of late-medieval English poetry.

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Seeta Chaganti is an Associate Professor of English Literature, University of California, Davis.