Mary Hayes Divine Ventriloquism in Medieval English Literature: Power

Divine Ventriloquism in Medieval English Literature studies medieval attitudes towards the human mediation of Gods and Christs voices and thus attends to how medieval people resignified a pagan practice. As Mary Hayes demonstrates, the ventriloquized divine voice ultimately permits an exploration of human relationships with God as well as mundane relationships between the divine voices designated clerical mediators and their lay audiences. This book demonstrates that the ventriloquized divine voice became a contested site of power as priests acquired more institutional endorsement and, ironically, devotion in some ways became putatively more laycentered. Taken together, these chapters tell a story, one of a progression from an orthodox view of divine vocal power, to an anxiety over the authority of the priests voice, to a subversive take on the ability of lay people not only to mimic the clerical voice but also to generate their own unique performances capable of divine communication. | Mary Hayes Divine Ventriloquism in Medieval English Literature: Power