Julian of Norwich

Question 1

Norwich: born

Answer 1

1342

Question 2

Norwich: dies

Answer 2

1420’s?

Question 3

Norwich: nature

Answer 3

fairly brutal—squalor and disease and the elements trying to intrude on the home; these punishments can also bring us close to God

Question 4

Norwich: ideology

Answer 4

The change from a warrior God to a more feminine God of suffering; christocentric.

Question 5

Norwich: cosmic relationship

Answer 5

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.

Question 6

Norwich: centres, home

Answer 6

Christ as mother; domestic sphere; squalor and disease;

Question 7

Norwich: mysticism

Answer 7

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.)

Question 8

Norwich: “mysticism” comes from the Greek for

Answer 8

“to conceal”

Question 9

Norwich: “showings” are sensory, especially

Answer 9

visual

Question 10

Norwich: her three desires

Answer 10

1. to suffer Christ’s pain on the cross
2. to have a bodily sickness in youth unto death
3. to have “wounds” of contrition, compassion, and longing for God

Question 11

Norwich: art, artifice

Answer 11

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)

Question 12

Norwich: genre

Answer 12

spiritual autobiography; sermon; visionary writing

Question 13

Norwich: form

Answer 13

fragmentary, incomplete

Question 14

Norwich: style, delivery

Answer 14

Oral delivery–circumlocution rather than the syllogistic style of the university trained theologian or debater.

Question 15

Norwich: most scholars believe short version was composed shortly after the showings of

Answer 15

1373

Question 16

Norwich: the long version was probably composed around

Answer 16

1393

Question 17

Norwich: Nicholas Watson has pointed out that the shorter version may have been written some years after 73. Why

Answer 17

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

Question 18

Norwich: warrior God v. Christ-mother

Answer 18

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

Question 19

Norwich: her chronological place in history of female writing

Answer 19

First verifiably female writer in English

Question 20

Norwich: her audience

Answer 20

those of the contemplative lifestyle, or just the devout who could read

Question 21

Norwich: anchorite lifestyle, general

Answer 21

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.

Question 22

Norwich: like Langland, she devotes her life to

Answer 22

thinking and rethinking her visionary experience

Question 23

Norwich: anchorite lifestyle for women, anchoress

Answer 23

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.

Question 24

Norwich: talking point, Jesus as mother

Answer 24

Cf. the hermaphrodite at this time; philosopher’s stone; itself a kind of “showing”

Question 25

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

Answer 25

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.

Question 26

Norwich: education

Answer 26

gives some insight into the educational possibilities at the time: the anchorite or anchoress was able to achieve the right atmosphere for learning.

Question 27

Norwich: God’s connection to his creatures, community as living creatures of God

Answer 27

everyone suffers together

Question 28

Norwich: God wants Julian to mark his words carefully: not that there won’t be torment but

Answer 28

that we can survive it

Question 29

Norwich: God’s attitude toward sin

Answer 29

less harsh

Question 30

Norwich: QUID PRO QUIETISM

Answer 30

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.

Question 31

Norwich: the earliest feminism, women’s rights

Answer 31

QUID PRO QUIETISM

Question 32

Norwich: irony

Answer 32

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)