'What then do I love, when I love my God?': Divine personae and the human subject in the devotional culture of late fourteenth-century Yorkshire.

This research provides the first full-length enquiry into the importance of God in late fourteenth-century experiences of subjectivity, evidenced through a localised study of texts from Yorkshire. The inextricability of self and God articulated in fourteenth-century works makes a full understanding of literary representations of divinity central to comprehending later medieval experiences of selfhood, autonomy and inwardness. These are key constituents of subjectivity studies. As Aers (1992) emphasises, enquiry into medieval subjectivity must prioritise contemporary Christianity. Yet no recent work fully explores this key area (Spearing, 2002; Lawton, 2017).

The devotional texts of Yorkshire are indicative of a thriving intellectual culture, yet remain underappreciated in scholarship. My close regional focus on Yorkshire addresses this gap. I will scrutinise several under-researched manuscripts, including MS Arundel 507 and MS Harley 1022, which are identified by Hanna (2003) as particularly needful of attention.

My work addresses two key questions: How do literary representations of God reflect conceptions of the
self? How do Yorkshire texts present, perform and imply relationships with God? The study will consist of
five chapters:
1. Examination of the devotional treatises of MS Arundel 507 (c.1350-c.1400) in light of contemporary
Augustinian epistemology. These treatises exemplify the inseparability of self and God asserted here.
2. Discussion of The Northern Passion (C14th-15th) and Alquin's Sermon to Guy of Warwick (C14th). The
key methods whereby these texts construct, anticipate and prioritise subjective responses will be
examined, bringing existing work on affective literary representations of Christ (Woolf, 1962; Singleton,
2007; Shoemaker, 2011) into dialogue with subjectivity studies.
3. Analysis of the positioning of self and God in MS Harley 1022 (c.1390-c.1425). Key linguistic features
such as voice, metaphor, metonymy and deixis in will be examined from a cognitive-poetic perspective,
using the tools of cognitive psychology to emphasise affective readerly experiences of God.
4. An exploration of idealised collective relationships with God in The Lay Folks' Mass Book (C14th) and
The Northern Homily Cycle (C14th), evaluating Lawton's (2017) assertion of the centrality of public
performance to medieval experiences of subjectivity.
5. Examination of the role of lyric voice in performing relationships between self and God in the the lyrics
of Richard Rolle (C14th-15th).

The first twelve months of the project will involve a thorough literature review, close work on primary texts, and archive visits. Chapters one and three will be addressed first, as their premises must be tested against evidence from manuscripts for which special consultation arrangements need to be made. The subsequent chapters will take either four or five months to write, depending on the volume of necessary
secondary reading.

As academic institutions pay increasing attention to diverse experiences of sexuality, gender, race and societal privilege, my open-minded approach to a full range of possible subjectivities illustrates the contemporary importance of medievalism. Attempts to understand modern lived experiences must consider subjectivity within a broader intellectual and ontological context. Scrutiny of medieval texts facilitates a fresh perspective on human subjectivity, open to experiences of selfhood which radically question dominant narratives surrounding individuality and autonomy.