In the last three decades metadiscourse has caught the attention of numerous scholars from
various research disciplines. This book adds to the discussion by looking at the phenomenon
from a historical angle. Text analyses with a corpus of sermons and religious treatises from
the 13th to the 18th century provide new insights into the way authors guide their audience
through their texts and persuade them of their points of view. The focus on the Middle and
Early Modern English periods which witnessed the disintegration of the Catholic Church in
England the Reformation the decline of Scholasticism and the advent of Renaissance Humanism
makes evident the influence of socio-cultural factors text-type conventions and a changing
author-addressee relationship on the development of metadiscourse.
