Rethinking the South English legendaries offers theoretically fresh approaches to the major vernacular collection of saints' lives in the English Middle Ages, combining leading scholars and new voices in the field. The volume creates a new platform for thinking about this richly dynamic but so far critically underappreciated medieval bestseller.

Heather Blurton is Associate Professor in English and Medieval Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara
Jocelyn Wogan-Browne is Thomas F.X. and Theresa Mullarkey Chair in Literature at Fordham University

Introduction: Rethinking the South English Legendaries - Heather Blurton and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne
Part I: (Re-)situating the South English Legendary
2. The South English Legendaries - Thomas Liszka
3. The social context of vernacular writing in thirteenth-century England: the
evidence of the manuscripts - John Frankis
4. The South English Legendary and its major Latin models - Sherry Reames
5. Outspoken style in the South English Legendary and Robert of Gloucester - Oliver Pickering
Part II: Manuscripts and Textual Cultures of the South English Legendaries
6. 'Lite bokes' and 'grete relikes': texts and their transmission in the South English Legendary - Chloe Morgan
7. Documents, poetry, and editorial practice: the case of 'St. Egwin' - Stephen M. Yeager
8. Modular dynamics in the South English Legendary - William Robins
Part III: Textual communities and the South English Legendaries
9. Forms of community in the South English Legendary - Catherine Sanok
10. Counting noses and assessing the numbers: native saints in the South English Legendaries - Virginia Blanton
11. Locating saints' lives and their communities - Jocelyn Wogan-Browne
12. Pope Gregory and St. Austin of Canterbury in the Early South English Legendary - E. Gordon Whatley
Part IV: Contexts and Discourses
13. Dangerous sympathies: political commentary in the South English Legendary
- Thomas J. Heffernan
14. 'His right hond he liet of-smite': Judas/Quiriac and the representation of Jewish identity in the South English Legendaries - Heather Blurton
15. Mapping identity in the South English Legendary - Sarah Breckenridge
16. Visualizing the South English Legendary: Bodleian Library, MS Tanner 17 Karen - A. Winstead
17. Conversion, translation and Becket's 'heathen' mother - Robert Mills
18. Bodies of belief: MS Bodley 779's South English Legendary - Jocelyn Wogan-Browne
Part V: Performance
19. Black humour in the South English Legendary - Oliver Pickering
20. Teaching the South English Legendaries at York: performativity and interdisciplinarity - Chloe Morgan, Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, Tim Ayers
Part VI: Afterword
21. Where next? - Anne B. Thompson
Works cited
Index