Speech representation in Robert Mannyng’s Handlyng Synne as a pedagogical tool

Pons-Sanz, Sara ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8752-0652 2023. Speech representation in Robert Mannyng’s Handlyng Synne as a pedagogical tool. Viator 53 (1)

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Abstract

With his translation of Manuel des péchés, Robert Mannyng wanted to guide both a lay and a clerical audience in their understanding of sin and engagement with confession. To do so he had to navigate various contrasting demands, such as exposing clerical shortcomings without driving parishioners away from their religious leaders, or teaching on sins of the tongue without inciting his audience to commit them. By moving away from the well-established focus on direct speech as a narrative technique simply aimed at making Handlyng Synne more appealing to a lay audience used to being entertained by oral narratives, and by exploring—through a specially adapted framework—the many different ways in which speech could be represented in medieval texts, this paper shows that the various modes of speech representation are a key component in Mannyng’s carefully constructed penitential text. They facilitate the audience’s emotional engagement, as well as the delivery of the pedagogical message and the avoidance of potential pitfalls by foregrounding and backgrounding information as required.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Published Online
Status:	Published
Schools:	English, Communication and Philosophy
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > PE English P Language and Literature > PR English literature
Publisher:	Brepols Publishers
ISSN:	0083-5897
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	23 September 2022
Date of Acceptance:	27 July 2022
Last Modified:	31 Mar 2024 18:15
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/152236

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