Richard Rolle & Invention Auth

This is the first literary study of the career of Richard Rolle (d. 1349) a Yorkshire hermit and mystic who was one of the most widely-read English writers of the late Middle Ages. Nicholas Watson proposes a new chronology of Rolle''s writings and offers the first literary analyses of a number of his works. He shows how Rolle''s career as a writer of passionate religious works in Latin and later in English has as its principal focus the establishment of his own spiritual authority. The book also addresses wider issues suggesting a new way of looking at mystical writing in general and challenging the prevailing view of the relationship between medieval and Renaissance attitudes to authors and authority.