http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/436539342

Reading and singing : liturgy, literacy, and literature in late medieval England

This study shows liturgy's intimate connection with changes in definitions of literate status, the articulation of the components of literate skills, and the production of vernacular literature in late medieval England. The fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries witnessed a considerable growth in liturgical benefactions. This upsurge in liturgical activity affected ecclesiastical institutions, their personnel, patrons and clientele. Both cleric and lay might be motivated to produce or consume liturgy through various desires related to piety, education, charity, or display. The variety of motivations, in fact, combined with the multiplication of contexts for performance, led to the unmooring of literate skills associated with the singing and reading of liturgical texts from the traditional context of the choral community. The resulting fluidity of definitions--both of the skills required for adequate performance of the liturgy and of the spiritual and ethical value of those skills--is manifested in the decontextualized collocation "reading and singing."

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