The Oxford English Literary History Vol. 2: 1350–1547. Reform and Cultural Revolution., Vol. 2: 1350–1547. Reform and Cultural Revolution.

Chapter 7, “Edifying the Church” (322–82), deals substantially with L and PPl in relation to prophecy, ecclesiology, labor and politics, “lollardy,” and theology. This is a revised version of an article in YLS 14 (2000), for which see “Annual Bibliography, 2000,” YLS 15 (2001): 256–57. The other discussion of note is at 479–83 in Chapter 9, “The Biblical,” where pre- Reformation biblical translations, adaptations, and appropriations are explored. The author reads PPl, the “most daring . . . of Pre-Arundelian works,” as a narrative account of “the education of the biblical reader,” Will (479). Analysis of various passages of scriptural citation, ascription, and translation leads to the conclusion that “for L . . . Scripture answers to human need” (483). Unlike the post-Reformation impulse of reading scripture “as ‘grounded’ in itself,” L’s “vernacular Scripture,” rather, foregrounds the importance of Will’s reading participating in a reformed, interpretative Church community (483).

Reviewed by John B. Gleason, Renaissance Quarterly 57.1 (2004): 361-62; Thomas Herron, Sixteenth Century Journal, 35.3 (2004): 915-16; Larry Scanlon, YLS 18 (2004): 176-83; Lesley Coote, Renaissance Forum, 7 (2004); Winthrop Wetherbee, Speculum, 80 (2005), 974–78; special issue of Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 35 (2005), ed. by David Aers and Sarah Beckwith.