Julian of Norwich

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Standard Name: Julian of Norwich
Self-constructed Name: Julian of Norwich
Julian of Norwich was a religious visionary whose experiences of the divine came to her in the later fourteenth century. She was also something that no Englishwoman had been before her: the author of a treatise offering spiritual guidance to others which achieved wide currency.
Riddy, Felicity. “Julian of Norwich and Self-Textualization”. Editing Women, edited by Ann M. Hutchison, University of Toronto Press, 1998, pp. 101-24.
103
Photograph of the statue of Julian of Norwich sculpted for a niche in the west front of Norwich Cathedral by David Holgate in 2014, six centuries after Julian's death. The photo, taken from below, shows only the waist up. Julian has an alert face and heroic stance, wrapped in a loose cloak and hood, and holding a book titled (in capitals very unlike the writing of her own day) "Revelations of Divine Love."

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Birth Anna Livia
Her parents named her after Anna Livia Plurabelle of Joyce 's Finnegans Wake, and after Julian of Norwich , medieval anchoress and author of Revelations of Divine Love.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
Cultural formation Mary Ann Kelty
MAK thought that the existential angst she suffered during her childhood was unique until she read Margaret Fuller 's Memoirs.
Kelty, Mary Ann. Reminiscences of Thought and Feeling. W. Pickering, 1852.
134
She felt her unhappiness as a child and young woman was good for...
Cultural formation Margery Kempe
At about forty, soon after her meeting with Julian , MK came to crisis point in a long-term spiritual struggle.
Kempe, Margery. The Book of Margery Kempe. Translator Windeatt, Barry A., Revised Edition, Penguin, 1994.
58, 305n1
Education Iris Murdoch
During this very important year of my life
Conradi, Peter J. Iris Murdoch. A Life. HarperCollins, 2002.
262
IM gravitated towards foreigners—an Indian, an Alexandrian, a Palestinian, a Jewish Austrian—whom she described as imprinted by Wittgenstein .
qtd. in
Conradi, Peter J. Iris Murdoch. A Life. HarperCollins, 2002.
263
She reached Cambridge just too late...
Education Michèle Roberts
She chose the medieval option. Her tutor was Rosemary Woolf , and she studied no authors later than Shakespeare . She reports the results of this in two different ways. In one version the course...
Friends, Associates Margery Kempe
MK made the brief journey to Norwich to seek spiritual advice from the anchoress Julian . This consultation brought together the two most significant women writers of the age.
Kempe, Margery. The Book of Margery Kempe. Translator Windeatt, Barry A., Revised Edition, Penguin, 1994.
78
Intertextuality and Influence Evelyn Underhill
Mysticism aims at nothing less than providing a comprehensive description, a philosophical analysis, and also . . . a justification of these experiences, regardless of the specific cultural and historical moments in which they occur...
Intertextuality and Influence Sue Townsend
ST said the book was based partly on fantasies of withdrawal (possibly through a prison sentence) that she used to entertain as a single mother of small children, partly on the idea of Julian of Norwich
Intertextuality and Influence Iris Murdoch
This moving and closely observed novel presents IM 's hallmark unforgettable moments: Dora rescuing a butterfly from the floor of a railway carriage, or flinging herself repeatedly against the lost medieval bell (now surreptitiously raised...
Intertextuality and Influence Maggie Gee
The comic, biting satire of the early chapters modulates into a thriller or adventure story as Vanessa pursues her dream of a safari among gorillas close to the dangerous Congo border. (Modern communications dominate this...
Intertextuality and Influence Kathleen Jamie
Julian of Norwich voices a sense of enclosure, frustration, praying in vain; but the final stanza (beginning And yet, and yet)
Jamie, Kathleen, and Lilias Fraser. Mr. and Mrs. Scotland are Dead. Bloodaxe Books, 2002.
50
is an image of light and fruition: I am suspended / in...
Intertextuality and Influence Mary Ferrar
The hold exerted on T. S. Eliot 's imagination by Little Gidding seems to have been produced by the idea of the community, not by their texts. His poem Little Gidding gives little hint that...
Intertextuality and Influence Monica Furlong
The Times Literary Supplement reviewer noted in Travelling In a host of quotations from old and new sources: from studies in Zen Buddhism , the Tao te Ching, the Theologica Germanica, and Julian of Norwich
Intertextuality and Influence Monica Furlong
Many of these poems trace patterns in their author's life; others engage with Christian women of earlier times. MF asks of Julian of Norwich : Be with us still, who bear our cells so badly...
Reception Lady Lucy Herbert
Dorothy L Latz , observing how LLH attributes maternal love to God (he is not content to call himself and to be our Father, but because a Mother's love is more tender, he compares...

Timeline

After 18 March 1954: English-educated, American historical or...

Writing climate item

After 18 March 1954

English-educated, American historical or biographical novelist Anya Seton issued her best-known work, Katherine, about the commoner from whom descends every English monarch since Henry VII .
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.

18 June 2006: Katharine Jefferts Schori, Bishop of Nevada,...

Building item

18 June 2006

Katharine Jefferts Schori , Bishop of Nevada, became arguably . . . the highest-ranking woman in Episcopal history when she was chosen presiding bishop of the Episcopal church in America.
Bates, Stephen. “Into the breach”. The Guardian, 24 June 2006, p. 29.
29

Texts

Julian of Norwich,. A Book of Showings to the Anchoress Julian of Norwich. Editors Colledge, Edmund and James Walsh, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1978.
Julian of Norwich,. “Introduction”. A Book of Showings, edited by Edmund Colledge and James Walsh, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1978, pp. 1-198.
Julian of Norwich,. “Introduction”. Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love, edited by Frances Beer, Carl Winter, 1978, pp. 7-37.
Julian of Norwich,. Revelations of Divine Love. R. F. S. Cressy, 1670.
Julian of Norwich, and Henry Collins. Revelations of Divine Love. T. Richardson, 1877.