Personification as Devotional Strategy in Middle Low German Literature

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In my DPhil dissertation, I will argue that the personification of time in medieval religious literature marks a distinct form of poetics. Addressing, describing, and interacting with a specific point in time - personifying it - allows an intercommunication with the divine which conveys agency to the speaker and has strong literary potential, that has yet to be studied systematically. I intend to analyse these poetics in a larger corpus of Northern German prayer books, by looking at the stylistic means of personification.This places the under-studied late medieval Middle Low German devotional literature in a line of heritage going back to greeting the Sabbath day as bride in Jewish culture via the bridal mysticism of Latin and Middle High German literature. By systematically analysing the usage and function of personifications of time within the Middle Low German prayers, my dissertation will chart a central topic - the function of time in religious poetics. For conducting my research, it is essential to consider the liturgical form that is inherent to the genre prayer book, linking it back to a more universal religious writing strategy, leading to the following questions: 1) Does the use of personification lead to a difference to common liturgical traditions?2) Does the use of religious personification shape a different form of devotional rhetoric? 3) If so, does the personification shape the individuality of the prayer and in doing so convey agency to the devotee? By taking this approach, my project is placed at a fascinating intersection of poetics, theology and female devotion. My literary approach complements the focus on the materiality of medieval manuscripts by linking textual and visual rhetoric. The material side of medieval devotional literature by women has been of interest to scholarship for some time, e.g. Caroline Walker Bynum's 'Dissimilar similitudes' (2020). My project contributes to this discussion by looking at the poetics of everyday objects, like the prayer books, through the lens of personification. While 'personification' in medieval German literature has been the subject of numerous analyses, personification as a way of manifesting poetics in German medieval devotional works i.e. prayer books has yet to be studied systematically. This is significant, because I would argue, that personification takes on a new significance in the context of religious writing, namely a strategy of visualisation of the sacred.A precise understanding of the term 'personification' and all its implications is fundamental to my project. This will form the foundation of my methodology chapter, to be completed in the first year of my DPhil. Additionally, I will complete a literary review during this first period. I will then establish the corpus of Northern German prayer books, starting with the prayer books from North German convents digitised by the Polonsky Foundation Digitization Project 'Manuscripts from German-Speaking Lands', a collaboration between the Bodleian Libraries and the Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbuttel. The second year will be used for textual analysis of the extended corpus, with the third and final year providing enough time for the combinational work and perspectives as well as potential revisions.In summary, my proposed DPhil project aims to unveil the distinct form of poetics in a larger corpus of Northern German prayer books, generated by the use of personifications of time. In doing so, I hope to contribute new insights to the overall scholarship for 'personification', by highlighting this specific function of personification in medieval devotional literature, as well as furthering our understanding of medieval prayer books.