Julian of Norwich Flashcards
Norwich: born
1342
Norwich: dies
1420’s?
Norwich: nature
fairly brutal—squalor and disease and the elements trying to intrude on the home; these punishments can also bring us close to God
Norwich: ideology
The change from a warrior God to a more feminine God of suffering; christocentric.
Norwich: cosmic relationship
Identifying God (and through him, oneself) in the general rather than the particular; the personal exists to fulfill the macrocosmic or universal, rather than the Romantic, post-Kantian conception that the universal is-for the personal.
Norwich: centres, home
Christ as mother; domestic sphere; squalor and disease;
Norwich: mysticism
understanding higher truths through revelation, involving an often ecstatic communion with God—so closely tied to the early Christian Eucharist. (Also probably the condescension of Christ; the Trinity.)
Norwich: “mysticism” comes from the Greek for
“to conceal”
Norwich: “showings” are sensory, especially
visual
Norwich: her three desires
- to suffer Christ’s pain on the cross
- to have a bodily sickness in youth unto death
- to have “wounds” of contrition, compassion, and longing for God
Norwich: art, artifice
Small orb = representation of all of creation; God is over it (in some ways this vision invites her outside the created cosmos with its spheres and to where God is (Cf. the epic trope about the cosmos)
Norwich: genre
spiritual autobiography; sermon; visionary writing
Norwich: form
fragmentary, incomplete
Norwich: style, delivery
Oral delivery–circumlocution rather than the syllogistic style of the university trained theologian or debater.
Norwich: most scholars believe short version was composed shortly after the showings of
1373
Norwich: the long version was probably composed around
1393
Norwich: Nicholas Watson has pointed out that the shorter version may have been written some years after 73. Why
Julian’s repeated insistence on her submission to the Church’s stance about the painting of crucifixes and scenes of Christ’s passion would be more appropriate to the 1380’s or later, when Wyclif’s Lollard followers had gained notoriety and condemnation for criticizing the Church’s use of these images
Norwich: warrior God v. Christ-mother
The shift toward a more feminine Christianity—intimacy, personal contact, domesticity, as opposed to the warlike god of early medieval Christianity up through the crusades
Norwich: her chronological place in history of female writing
First verifiably female writer in English
Norwich: her audience
those of the contemplative lifestyle, or just the devout who could read
Norwich: anchorite lifestyle, general
Anchorite lifestyle increasingly common in late middle ages: this was someone who had entered into an enclosed solitary life in a fixed place, in order to achieve greater spiritual perfection (late 12-th century Ancrene Wisse offers guidance for this way of life). Allows for individual forms of devotion. More anchorites and hermits recorded in Norwich than in any other medieval English town.
Norwich: like Langland, she devotes her life to
thinking and rethinking her visionary experience
Norwich: anchorite lifestyle for women, anchoress
o Offers women some privacy, autonomy, and a chance for intellectual development that would have been unavailable even in a convent. Many lived in cells attached to churches, and Julian lived in such a cell at the St Julian’s church in Norwich (likely where she got her name). Julian appears as an anchorite in The Book of Margery Kempe, where she gives Margery some advice.
Norwich: talking point, Jesus as mother
Cf. the hermaphrodite at this time; philosopher’s stone; itself a kind of “showing”
Norwich: God says to Julian: “I will make all things well; I shall make all things well, I may make all things well, and I can make all things well.” Analyze
There’s not only unlimited potential for God to make things well; His omniscient foresight involves every possible iteration of the future for Julian—including one in which God only “may” or “can” make all things well. In other words, perhaps, the “wellness” is the only guarantee—not that it will come in a way mortals recognize.
Norwich: education
gives some insight into the educational possibilities at the time: the anchorite or anchoress was able to achieve the right atmosphere for learning.
Norwich: God’s connection to his creatures, community as living creatures of God
everyone suffers together
Norwich: God wants Julian to mark his words carefully: not that there won’t be torment but
that we can survive it
Norwich: God’s attitude toward sin
less harsh
Norwich: QUID PRO QUIETISM
Literally every part of the written account serves to glorify God and support the Catholic Church in powerful ways, so it can’t be censored–nor would the clergy desire to censor something that speaks so well of them. But in return she gets to set a precedent for a woman receiving and communicating revelation directly from God, and one which is weighty on many highly important questions, like God’s nature, his attitude toward sin, etc.
Norwich: the earliest feminism, women’s rights
QUID PRO QUIETISM
Norwich: irony
No irony seems intended, and to attribute irony to her would be pure speculation, unsupported by the text; still, whether it is merely circumstantial or simply subconscious, it is still effective)
