Abstract
The article traces potential visual sources of Julian of Norwich’s (1343–after 1416) Revelations or Showings, suggesting that many of them come from familiar everyday devotional objects such as Psalters, Books of Hours, or rosary beads. It attempts to approach Julian’s text from the perspective of neuromedievalism, combining more familiar textual analysis with some recent findings in clinical psychology and neuroscience. By doing so, the essay emphasizes the embodied nature of Julian’s visions and devotions as opposed to the more apophatic approach expected from a mystic.
Highlights
This paper has a very simple thesis to illustrate: that a lot, if not most of theology, found in the writings of Julian of Norwich (1343–after 1416)—a celebrated mystic and the first English female author known by name—comes from familiar, close-to-home objects and images
Rather than focusing on theological and philosophical readings of Julian’s text or examining it from the perspective of medieval theories of vision, I read Julian through the developing work on medieval ekphrasis (Barbetti 2011; Fraeters et al 2013; Johnson et al 2015) combined with the elements of neurohumanities, especially neuroarthistory Despite the recently voiced criticism of “neuromania” in the Humanities, the view best presented in (Tallis 2016), neuroscience is entering the field of vision of medievalists, see (Chance 2012)—the whole journal issue dedicated to
‘neuromedievalism’, especially Jane Chance’s own introduction to it, pp. 247–61; (Blud 2016), the work on neurology of scribes by Deborah Thorpe, e.g., (Thorpe 2015), the forthcoming collection by (Dresvina and Blud forthcoming), and, to a certain extent (Karnes 2011; Morgan 2013), which includes a brief section on the role of the mirror neurons in our understanding of mystical experiences, and (Kroll and Bachrach 2005)
Summary
This paper has a very simple thesis to illustrate: that a lot, if not most of theology, found in the writings of Julian of Norwich (1343–after 1416)—a celebrated mystic and the first English female author known by name—comes from familiar, close-to-home objects and images Images are such an integral aspect of our existence that the famous neuroscientist Rodolfo Llinás, and many after him, claimed that our brain is about making images Part of the scholarly appeal of such an iconic and much-studied corpus as Julian’s Showings or Revelations is its transcendental subject-matter resulting in a rich, complex, infuriatingly ambiguous and notoriously hard-to-understand text Together with her writing, Julian’s elusive figure itself is a hotly debated object of academic, religious, or political partisanship: Julian the proto-protestant, proto-feminist, proto-Catholic modernist, undercover heretic, undercover academic, undercover dissident, witness to the vitality and flexibility of late-medieval devotional science, and so on (Morris and Holloway 2010). Her text is clever and carefully designed, that is granted; but even if Julian was a prodigy and somehow received the best education available in her time (which is highly debatable), her text cannot possibly be what it is often seen like—a cerebral compendium of veiled commentaries on contemporary theological and intellectual issues
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
