Dear Marleen,
Just some bibliographical information in regard to sermon
literature in Middle English. The following information is taken from
Thomas Hall, *A Basic Bibliography of Medieval Sermon Studies*, in
*Medieval Sermon Studies* Autumn 1995, pp. 26-42, pp. 35-36:
Middle English
The rich corpus of sermons in Middle English is surveyed
by Thomas J. Heffernan, *Sermon Literature*, in *Middle English Prose: A
Critical Guide to Major Authors and Genres*, ed. A. S. G. Edwards (New
Brunswick, New Jersey, 1984), pp. 177-207, which includes a generous
bibliography of primary and secondary materials. The best discussion of
the subject is now H. Leith Spencer's *English Preaching in the Late Middle
Ages* (Oxford, 1993), an impressive work with a valuable chapter on *Sermon
Form and an appendix that includes selected sermon summaries. Two
classic studies of the sermon in late medieval England are G. R. Owst,
*Preaching in Medieval England: An Introduction to Sermon Manuscripts of
the Period c. 1350-1450* (Cambridge, 1926); and Owst, *Literature and Pulpit
in Medieval England: A Neglected Chapter in the History of English Letters
and of the English People*, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1966). Owst's fascination
with what sermons reveal about the daily lives of people in the Middle
Ages is suggested by the title of his article *The People's Sunday
Amusements in the Preaching of Medieval England*, Holborn Review 68
(1926), 32-45.
Three volumes of a projected four-volume edition of the corpus of
294 Wycliffite sermons have now appeared by Anne Hudson and Pamela Gradon,
eds., English Wycliffite Sermons (Oxford, 1983- ). Also of interest are
Homer G. Pfander, *The Popular Sermon of the Medieval Friar in England* (New
York, 1937); D. W. Robertson, *Frequency of Preaching in
Thirteenth-Century England*, *Speculum 24* (1949), 376-88; William A.
Hinnebusch, *The Early English Friars Preachers* (Rome, 1951); and J. W.
Blench, *Preaching in England in the Late Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries*
(Oxford, 1964).
Patrick J. Horner has authored a comprehensive survey of Middle
English *Sermons and Homiletics* scheduled to appear in a forthcoming
volume of the ongoing Manual of Writings in Middle English. For
unpublished materials, see V. M. OUMara, *A Checklist of Unedited Late
Middle English Sermons that Occur Singly or in Small Groups*, Leeds
Studies in English n.s. 19 (1988), 141-66. Among recent studies are
Sabine Volk-Birke, Chaucer and Medieval Preaching: Rhetoric for Listeners
in Sermons and Poetry, Script Oralia 34 (Tubingen, 1991); and Siegfried
Wenzel, *Macaronic Sermons: Bilingualism and Preaching in Late-Medieval
England* (Ann Arbor, MI, 1994).
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I'm sure that mention of Bernard should be found in some of these works.
Good luck.
Carolyn Muessig
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