This collection explores some of the many ways in which sanctity was closely intertwined with the development of literary strategies across a range of writings in late medieval Britain. Rather than looking for clues in religious practices in order to explain such changes, or reading literature for information about sanctity, these essays consider the ways in which sanctity - as concept and as theme - allowed writers to articulate and to develop further their 'craft' in specific ways. While scholars in recent years have turned once more to questions of literary form and technique, the kinds of writings considered in this collection - writings that were immensely popular in their own time - have not attracted the same amount of attention as more secular forms.

The collection as a whole offers new insights for scholars interested in form, style, poetics, literary history and aesthetics, by considering sanctity first and foremost as literature

'In its individual essays and collective prod to supple analysis, Sanctity as Literature will cast a long shadow over future scholarship on hagiography, poetics, and literariness in later medieval literatures.’
Cynthia Turner Camp, University of Georgia

Eva von Contzen is Assistant Professor of Old and Middle English Language, Literature and Culture at Ruhr-Universität Bochum

Anke Bernau is Senior Lecturer in Medieval Literature and Culture at the University of Manchester