Marlene Hennessy

Marlene Villalobos Hennessy received her B.A. from Bard College and her Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University in 2001. In 2003-2004 she was an Andrew W. Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto. Her areas of interest include Middle English Literature, Medieval Manuscripts and the History of the Book, Late Medieval Scotland, and Medieval Religious Culture. She teaches courses on Chaucer, Early British Literature, and Medieval Women, among others. She was awarded the Donald Bullough Fellowship for a Mediaeval Historian at the St. Andrews Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Scotland, for the spring 2012 term.

She is the author of An Index of Images in English and Scottish Manuscripts from the Time of Chaucer to Henry VIII, c. 1380 - c. 1509. Scottish Manuscripts & English Manuscripts in Scotland. Fascicle I: National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh (Turnhout: Brepols/Harvey Miller Publishers, 2022). She has edited a collection of essays, Tributes to Kathleen L. Scott. English Medieval Manuscripts: Readers, Makers and Illuminators (London and Turnhout: Harvey Miller/Brepols, 2009), and is currently working on a book-length project entitled Blood Writing: Manuscripts and Metaphors in the Late Middle Ages.

Two other works are forthcoming: Women in Late Medieval Britain: Makers, Patrons, and Readers. Edited with Martha W. Driver. Proceedings of the 2024 Harlaxton Symposium, Harlaxton Medieval Studies, vol. 35 (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2026) and Book Ownership by Merchants, Artisans, and Craftsmen in Late Medieval and Tudor Britain, 1300-1600 (with Kathleen L. Scott, in preparation).

“British Library, MS Egerton 1821: Devotional Practice and Book Production at the London Charterhouse,” in The Capital’s Charterhouses and the Record of English Carthusianism, ed. Julian M. Luxford (Toronto: PIMS, 2023), pp. 79-116.

“Bookish Wonders: Manuscript and Miracle in the Life of St Dominic,” in The Medieval Book as Object, Idea and Symbol. Proceedings of the 2019 Harlaxton Symposium, Harlaxton Medieval Studies, vol. 31, ed. Julian Luxford (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2021), pp. 178-99.

An Index of Images in English and Scottish Manuscripts from the Time of Chaucer to Henry VIII, c. 1380 - c. 1509. Scottish Manuscripts & English Manuscripts in Scotland. Fascicle I: National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh (Turnhout: Brepols/Harvey Miller Publishers, 2020).

“Otherworldly Visions: Miracle and Prophecy Among the English Carthusians, 1300-1535,” in Manuscript Culture and Medieval Devotional Traditions: Essays in Honor of Michael G. Sargent, ed. Jennifer N. Brown and Nicole R. Rice (York Medieval Press/Boydell and Brewer, 2020).

“Holiness,” in Geoffrey Chaucer in Context, ed. Ian Johnson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 167-77.

"The Arbuthnott Book of Hours: Book Production and Religious Culture in Late Medieval Scotland,” in Art, Architecture, and Archaeology in the Medieval Diocese of Aberdeen, British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions, vol. 38, ed. Jane Geddes (Leeds: Maney Publishing, 2016).

“The Disappearing Book in ‘The Revelation of the Hundred Pater Nosters’” in ‘Diuerse Imaginaciouns of Cristes Life’: Devotional Culture in England and Beyond, 1300-1560, ed. Stephen Kelly and Ryan Perry (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012).

“The Social Life of A Manuscript Metaphor: Christ’s Blood as Ink” in The Social Life of Illumination, ed. Joyce Coleman, Mark Kruse, and Kathryn Smith (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011).

“The Verses over the Cell Doors of London Charterhouse,” in Studies in Carthusian Monasticism in the Late Middle Ages, ed. Julian M. Luxford (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), 179-197. Written with Michael G. Sargent.

“Three Marian Texts Including a Prayer for a Lay-Brother in London, British Library MS Additional 37049,” English Manuscript Studies, 1100-1700, vol. 14, Regional Manuscripts 1200-1700, ed. A.S.G. Edwards (London: British Library, 2008): 163-79.

“Aspects of Blood Piety in a Late Medieval English Manuscript,” in History in the Comic Mode: Medieval Communities and the Matter of Person, ed. Rachel Fulton and Bruce W. Holsinger (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 182-191.

“Passion Devotion, Penitential Reading, and the Manuscript Page: The ‘Hours of the Cross’ in London, British Library, MS Additional 37049,” Mediaeval Studies 66 (2004): 213-52.

“The Remains of the Royal Dead in an English Carthusian Manuscript, London, British Library, MS Additional 37049,” Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies 33 (2002): 310-54.