English Convents Research Articles

Lived Religion in English Convents in Exile, 1600 - 1800: Accommodating the Ordinary and the Exceptional within the Rule

Conventual life in the early modern English communities in exile strictly observed the Rule and Constitutions which governed each house. These not only set out in great detail how every part of the day was to be spent but specified the spirit in which both lay sisters and choir nuns were to approach their tasks: all their time was devoted to God in a spirit of humility. Obituary notices commend many nuns for their assiduity in complying with these strictures, often over very long lives. Nevertheless, there was room for individuality provided it was expressed in the right spirit. This paper examines some examples of how the unusual co-existed with everyday life in a monastic setting.

‘An English Monstrosity’? Evolution and Reception of Manx Orthography

Abstract This article evaluates perceptions of Manx orthography within Celtic scholarship. The predominant view is well summarized by Jackson (1955: 108): ‘Manx orthography is an English monstrosity which obscures both pronunciation and etymology’. Similarly, O’Rahilly dismisses Manx spelling as ‘an abominable system, neither historic nor phonetic, and based mainly on English’ (O’Rahilly 1932: 20). The article sets these perceptions in the sociohistorical context in which the system was developed by the Manx clergy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is argued that the system is neither so directly dependent on English conventions, nor so unsystematic and inconsistent, as has been often claimed. Such weaknesses as do exist from the perspective of contemporary scholars and students of the language should not necessarily be viewed as such in the light of the needs, priorities and assumptions of those who practised Manx writing in its original context. It is shown that there was in fact an increase in the phonological transparency of certain elements of the system during the standardization of the mid-eighteenth century represented by the publication of translations of the Book of Common Prayer (1765) and the Bible (1771-72). On the other hand, countervailing pressures towards phonological ambiguity, iconicity and idiosyncrasy are discussed, including the utility of distinguishing homophones; real or presumed etymologies; the influence of non-standard or regional English spelling conventions; tensions between Manx and English norms; and an apparent preference in certain cases for more ambiguous spellings as a compromise between variant forms. Negative outcomes of the received view for scholarship on Manx are also examined, with a case study of the neglect of orthographic evidence for the historical phonology of the language. The wider context of English-based orthographies for Gaelic is also briefly considered.

Identity Construction in Academic Writing of Student Writers Who Use English as an Additional Language: A Literature Review1

Abstract Academic writing is social interaction between writer and reader, during which writers can employ discursive and non-discursive features to construct their identities. However, many student writers who are users of English as an additional language (EAL) may find it challenging to construct their identities in academic writing. Properly constructed identity in academic writing can help EAL student writers develop a stronger sense of self, exercise their agency, and negotiate the academic discourse. Therefore, this paper reviews empirical studies on EAL student writers’ identity construction when they write in English to investigate the features of identities that EAL student writers construct in texts and the factors that influence their identity construction. The findings show that, compared with expert writers and native-English-speaking (NES) counterparts, EAL student writers tend to present a weak authorial identity. Furthermore, EAL student writers tend to be more engaged with texts than with readers and lack commitment to their claims. The identities that EAL student writers construct in academic writing are also interwoven with EAL students’ English proficiency levels, educational experience, disciplinary conventions, genre affordances, and audience awareness. The findings of this literature review can help teachers and educators raise EAL students’ identity awareness and facilitate students in strategically constructing writer identities in academic writing.

Nature as a Motif in Arabic Andalusian Poetry and English Romanticism

This paper examines some tenets in the Andalusian and Romantic poetry and shows how poets such as Ibrahim Ibn Khafāja (1058-1138) and William Wordsworth (1770 –1850) used nature as a motif in their poetry. Relying on a historical approach, this paper links smaller features such as themes and literary devices in the Andalusian and Romantic poetry with larger features, including genre, traditions, and cultural system. I argue that the emphasis on both the larger and smaller features of poetry creates what Franco Moretti calls “distant reading.” Comparing and contrasting Ibn Khafāja’s “the Mountain” and Wordsworth’s “the Daffodils,” for instance, introduces nature as a recurrent theme in both Andalusian and Romantic literary traditions, reinforcing Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s description of poetry as a common possession of humanity” (Goethe 229). In addition to that, comparing the images and themes in both the Andalusian and Romantic poetry not only shows internally linked meanings, but it creates what Cesar Dominguez, et al, call “a space for polyglottism, multidisciplinarity, scholarly collaboration” (75). Reading these works and movements closely and distantly serves as a cross-cultural dialogue between the Arabic and English poetic conventions. While Ibn Khafāja and Wordsworth lived in different places and times, wrote in different languages, and did not have the same socio-political circumstances, their poems show the richness and multiplicity of the historical experience of world literature.

Nature as a Motif in Arabic Andalusian Poetry and English Romanticism

This paper examines some tenets in the Andalusian and Romantic poetry and shows how poets such as Ibrahim Ibn Khafāja (1058-1138) and William Wordsworth (1770 –1850) used nature as a motif in their poetry. Relying on a historical approach, this paper links smaller features such as themes and literary devices in the Andalusian and Romantic poetry with larger features, including genre, traditions, and cultural system. I argue that the emphasis on both the larger and smaller features of poetry creates what Franco Moretti calls “distant reading.” Comparing and contrasting Ibn Khafāja’s “the Mountain” and Wordsworth’s “the Daffodils,” for instance, introduces nature as a recurrent theme in both Andalusian and Romantic literary traditions, reinforcing Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s description of poetry as a common possession of humanity” (Goethe 229). In addition to that, comparing the images and themes in both the Andalusian and Romantic poetry not only shows internally linked meanings, but it creates what Cesar Domínguez, et al, call “a space for polyglottism, multidisciplinarity, scholarly collaboration” (75). Reading these works and movements closely and distantly serves as a cross-cultural dialogue between the Arabic and English poetic conventions. While Ibn Khafāja and Wordsworth lived in different places and times, wrote in different languages, and did not have the same socio-political circumstances, their poems show the richness and multiplicity of the historical experience of world literature.

Torres Strait Island Parents’ Involvement in their Children’s Mathematics Learning: A Discussion paper

This paper is a beginning point for discussing what the literature states about parents’ involvement in their children’s mathematics education. Where possible it will focus on Torres Strait Islander Peoples. Little is known about how Torres Strait Islander parents approach their children’s learning of mathematics and how important early mathematics is to mothers. What is known is that is they are keen for their children to receive an education that provides them with opportunities for their present and future lives. However, gaining access to education is challenging given that the language of instruction in schools is written to English conventions, decontextualised and disconnected from the students’ culture, community and home language. This paper discusses some of the issues raised in the literature about what parents are confronted with when making decisions about their children’s education.

Exile and Linguistic Encounter: Early Modern English Convents in the Low Countries and France

The history of religious migration and experience of exile in the early modern period has received a great deal of attention in recent years. Neglected within this scholarship, however, is sustained discussion of linguistic encounter within these often fraught transcultural and transnational interactions. This article breaks new ground by exploring the linguistic experiences of religious exiles in English convents founded in the Low Countries. Most women within English communities in exile were linguistically challenged; focusing on the creative ways these women subsequently negotiated language barriers sheds new light on female language acquisition and encounter during this period.

DIALOGIC INTERACTIVE SPEAKING SKILLS ASSESSMENT IN THE EXPERIENTIAL TEACHING OF TECHNICAL ENGLISH TO TERTIARY SCHOOL STUDENTS

The article discusses the outcomes of the research on dialogic interactive skills assessment in teaching Technical English to tertiary school students. The authors propose to implement dialogic collaborative interaction as both the medium of instruction and an alternative assessment tool. Theoretically, the study relies on the assumption that Technical English speaking skills acquisition is carried out through different types of communicative interaction and collaborative dialogic interaction in particular. The procedure proposed for speaking skills assessment has been primarily targeted at sustaining oral collaborative interaction along with assessing students’ communicative competence. The research represented relies on the experimental teaching English speaking skills to the 1st year Bachelor’s students (n=84) at Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute. The assessment criteria include conformity of utterances to the topic; speaking tempo; relative grammatical, lexical and phonetic accuracy; cohesion and coherence; compliance with the stylistic and etiquette conventions of English; diversity of grammatical and lexical devices for reaching mutual understanding between the dialogue participants; the interlocutor’s speaking initialisation; reaching consensus; and background knowledge deduction. The results of the research confirm that the assessment procedure introduced contributes to boosting oral production if the techniques of supporting collaborative dialogic interaction are applied by the interlocutors. Collaborative dialogue positively affects the development of students’ communicative competence and acquisition of such skills as perceiving, understanding and decoding the content of oral texts, identifying the communicative purpose of interlocutor’s utterances through analysing verbal and non-verbal means; defining the style and genre of utterances and aligning them with stylistic registers in English.

The Chronicles of Nazareth (The English Convent), Bruges, 1629–1793. Caroline Bowden, ed.

<i>The Chronicles of Nazareth (The English Convent), Bruges, 1629–1793</i>. Caroline Bowden, ed.

The Chronicles of Nazareth (The English Convent) Bruges 1629‐1793. Edited by CarolineBowden. Pp. xxxvi, 556, Woodbridge, Suffolk/ Rochester, NY: Boydell &amp; Brewer, for The Catholic Record Society, 2017, £50.00.

The Chronicles of Nazareth (The English Convent) Bruges 1629‐1793. Edited by CarolineBowden. Pp. xxxvi, 556, Woodbridge, Suffolk/ Rochester, NY: Boydell &amp; Brewer, for The Catholic Record Society, 2017, £50.00.

Appartenance et singularité des couvents anglais en exil sur le continent : l’exception anglaise

After the Henrician reformation and the dissolution of the monasteries, as Protestantism settled as the established religion under Elizabeth I, English Catholic women who wished to take the veil had no other choice but to leave their native country to embrace religious life on the Continent, amongst local communities, often in the North of France and the Spanish Netherlands. In those convents, the refugees embodied the plight of a Catholicism without borders which, in the face of Protestant persecution, refused to be defeated and, on the contrary, grew in fervour. Yet although they proudly belonged to the universal Church of Rome, English nuns were different from their Continental Sisters. A brief study of some of the twenty-two convents founded specifically for English entrants during the seventeenth century will reveal the most salient aspects which made English convents in exile exceptional.

Early Modern English Catholicism: Identity, Memory and Counter-Reformation, ed. James E. Kelly and Susan Royal

This book is the outcome of the first international bi-annual symposium on early modern Catholicism that was jointly run by the University of Durham and the University of Notre Dame in 2013. The two editors, James E. Kelly and Susan Royal, state in the introduction that the purpose of the collection is to establish that early modern English Catholicism can be defined through three key themes—identity, memory and counter-reformation—and this aim is generally achieved throughout the volume. The first part of the book deals with how English Catholics sought to preserve their religious and national identity. Brad Gregory’s essay on situating early modern English Catholicism asserts that English Catholic identity was affected by chronology, geography and the sociological and theological aspects of Catholicism in the early decades after the Reformation, affirming that ‘English Catholicism’ included Welsh, Irish and Scottish Catholics. Gregory’s central claim is that English Catholicism can only be understood by seeing it as a part of European history, and he disputes John Bossy’s hypothesis that post-Reformation English Catholicism did not exist until 1570. Gabriel Glickman’s chapter examines how Catholics explored the concept of British identity in the long eighteenth century. Glickman convincingly demonstrates that, despite the complex relationship between England, Scotland and Ireland which pre-dated the Reformation, mutual cultural relations between these countries allowed networks, commerce and devotional ideas to be exchanged domestically and internationally. The other two chapters scrutinise the ways in which religious orders constructed English Catholic identity. James E. Kelly’s chapter describes English convents in Europe offering an avenue for nuns to preserve their English Catholic identity by acting as receptacles for the growing demand in relic collecting; he provides numerous examples of nuns rescuing relics from destruction, which they then used as aids to memorialise the Catholic Church’s history. Thomas M. McCoog’s chapter on the Society of Jesus and the vicars apostolic contends that the English secular clergy exploited the suppression of the Jesuits in Liège and St Omers for the benefit of their own seminaries, which showed how these fractious relationships had an impact on English Catholic identity.

Mannock Strickland, 1683–1744. Agent to English convents in Flanders. Letters and accounts from exile. By Richard G. Williams. (Catholic Record Society Publications, 86.) Pp. lxxxviii + 342 incl. frontispiece and 5 figs. Woodbridge–Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 2016 (publ. for The Catholic Record Society). £50. 978 0 902832 30 5

Mannock Strickland, 1683–1744. Agent to English convents in Flanders. Letters and accounts from exile. By Richard G. Williams. (Catholic Record Society Publications, 86.) Pp. lxxxviii + 342 incl. frontispiece and 5 figs. Woodbridge–Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 2016 (publ. for The Catholic Record Society). £50. 978 0 902832 30 5 - Volume 69 Issue 2

Invisible Languages in Eden Robinson’s Monkey Beach

Language in Monkey Beach is vital in delineating roles of “insider” and “outsider” within the text. Lisamarie Hill’s inability to speak the Haisla language as fluently as her grandmother, Ma-ma-oo, always endorsed, isolates her from being able to fully understand her Haisla roots. As Ma-ma-oo says: “… to really understand the old stories, you had to speak Haisla" (211). Yet, it is also through the matrilineal line that Lisa inherits the role that secures her a position as a Haisla “insider”. Lisa inherits her grandmother’s and mother’s gift of foresight, and an ability to speak to spirits and the dead. She inherits the language of the old stories, those that by Ma-ma-oo’s logic are unutterable in English. The language of the dead is an invisible language because it is inviolate by colonial forces and it functions outside of Western epistemology, but also because the text itself is written in English. Thus the mainstream reader becomes the “outsider”, denied access to the language of the spirit world, receiving instead an inadequate English translation. The narrative emphasizes the impotence of English translation earlier in the text, noting that: “Haisla has many sounds that don’t exist in English, so it is not possible to spell the words using English conventions” (193). Translational failure becomes manifest in the spelling of Haisla words using transliteration, which become physically fragmented by apostrophes and point to the problems of translation, and to ultimately undermine the task of translating Haisla culture into the “Western” medium of the novel.

LANGUAGE AND POWER IN AN ENGLISH CONVENT IN EXILE, c. 1621 – c. 1631

AbstractScholarship on transnational encounter has predominantly focused on men's cross-cultural interactions. This article breaks new ground by exploring women's roles in similar forms of linguistic and power negotiation within the context of English convents founded in Europe during the seventeenth century. Moreover, recent scholarship on English convents has so far remained silent on the question of how these women negotiated the language barriers that many of them faced. This article proposes an answer by examining the correspondence sent in the 1620s from the English Benedictine convent in Brussels. These letters reveal the changing ways in which English nuns relied on both male and female translators to communicate. In so doing, this article expands existing scholarly understanding of epistolary and literary culture by exploring the authorial strategies employed in the convent, which afforded the nuns a sense of authority over their texts. The letters were vital avenues for the women to express dissent, and raise concerns over the way their community was governed. Finally, despite being enclosed institutions, English convents in exile were not monoglot spaces but porous sites of multi-lingual encounter.

Caroline Bowden and James E. Kelly, editors, English Convents in Exile, 1600-1800: Communities, Culture and Identity. Review by Alicia Kerfoot

Caroline Bowden and James E. Kelly, editors, English Convents in Exile, 1600-1800: Communities, Culture and Identity. Review by Alicia Kerfoot

Writing MentorTM: Writing Progress Using Self-Regulated Writing Support

The Writing Mentor TM (WM) application is a Google Docs add-on designed to help students improve their writing in a principled manner and to promote their writing success in postsecondary settings. WM provides automated writing evaluation (AWE) feedback using natural language processing (NLP) methods and linguistic resources. AWE features in WM have been informed by research about postsecondary student writers often classified as developmental (Burstein et al., 2016b), and these features address a breadth of writing sub-constructs (including use of sources, claims, and evidence; topic development; coherence; and knowledge of English conventions). Through an optional entry survey, WM collects self-efficacy data about writing and English language status from users. Tool perceptions are collected from users through an optional exit survey. Informed by language arts models consistent with the Common Core State Standards Initiative and valued by the writing studies community, WM takes initial steps to integrate the reading and writing process by offering a range of textual features, including vocabulary support, intended to help users to understand unfamiliar vocabulary in coursework reading texts. This paper describes WM and provides discussion of descriptive evaluations from an Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT) usability task situated in WM and from users-in-the-wild data. The paper concludes with a framework for developing writing feedback and analytics technology.

Supporting the Argumentative Writing of Students in Linguistically Diverse Classrooms: An Action Research Study

The number of English language learners (ELLs) mainstreamed into regular classrooms continues to increase. Curricular writing standards required by the Common Core State Standards require students to write essays analytically in response to text(s). Many English Language Arts (ELA) teachers may worry about effectively delivering essay writing instruction to their ELL students while still meeting the needs of their proficient English-speaking students. This action research study is a direct response to the concern of two middle level teachers about the writing performance of students in their linguistically diverse classrooms on their state’s writing assessment. The study examined the effects of strategy-focused writing instruction on the argumentative essay-writing skills of 47 linguistically diverse seventh-grade students. The students received the strategy-focused writing instruction five days per week for 40 minutes over a 16-week period. Analyses of the data revealed that students’ overall writing performance increased significantly from pretest to posttest. Students also made significant gains across the pre- and posttest period in the following two domains: (1) Evidence and Elaboration and (2) Conventions of Standard English, but not on the Purpose, Focus, and Organization domain.

Devotional Culture and Intellectual Community in the English Convents in Exile

AbstractThroughout the 17th century, English convents located in France, Portugal, and the Low Countries offered Catholic women an alternative to England's religious settlement. These exilic communities enabled multiple forms of exchange, grounded in the devotional cultures that flourished within specific religious orders, including Mary Ward's unenclosed order modeled on the Jesuits; new foundations of Benedictine, Augustinian, and Poor Clare convents, among others; and the continuous community of Syon Abbey, forced into exile at the dissolution. In the last decade, editorial projects and data collection have begun to reveal the richness and variety of surviving textual materials, and recent scholarly work has built upon these recovery efforts to demonstrate the significance of the convents in exile to the national and religious identity of English Catholics, Civil War and Interregnum politics, and the development of canonical literary history.

The Experience of Exile in Early Modern English Convents

English Catholic women who established and joined expatriate convents in the southern Netherlands and France during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were subject to both exile and strict monastic enclosure. Separation and suffering were therefore common tropes in convent narrative, iconography and ritual. This article argues that exile was an intrinsic feature of individual and corporate religious identity in the English cloisters. By articulating grief in convent writings and appropriating anguish within personal and communal piety, the expatriate nuns were both consoled and inspired to actively pursue their goal of returning their cloisters to England.