William Casper Schenck, Reading saints' lives and striving to live as saints: Reading and rewriting medieval hagiography, Boston, Boston College, 2008

Prof. M.T. Bruckner Résumé DAI : This study demonstrates the essential connection between literature and history by examining the way selected saints' lives were read and rewritten in Latin and Old French from the eleventh to thirteenth centuries. Building on the concept of the horizon of expectations developed by Hans Robert Jauss, it argues against both the model of literature as a series of timeless classics whose meaning is apparent to the intelligent reader of any age and the tendency to reduce literature to the more or less successful imitation of historical realities. Not only does the interpretation of a saint's life change over time as the text is read in different religious and cultural contexts, but the narrative is in turn capable of influencing the way its readers understand themselves and the world in which they live. By comparing different versions of each saint's life, I am able to isolate variations in form, tone, characterization, and action, and relate them to the experiences of specific historical figures whose lives illustrate the important religious and cultural issues of their time....