Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Julian of Norwich
-
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, pp. 101-24.
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...
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
Textual Features
Winefrid Thimelby
Latz also finds her style to be poetic, reflecting the influence of mystics like St Augustine
and Ruysbroeck
(whose work was later translated and discussed by Evelyn Underhill
); Thimelby quotes and cites these two...
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...
Textual Production
Dorothy Richardson
In her correspondence Richardson addresses a great range of topics, including her own varied reading. She comments on women writers from Julian of Norwich
through Jane Austen
, Emily
and Charlotte Brontë
, George Eliot
Education
Iris Murdoch
During this very important year of my life
Conradi, Peter J. Iris Murdoch. A Life. HarperCollins.
262
IM
gravitated towards foreigners—an Indian, an Alexandrian, a Palestinian, a Jewish Austrian—whom she described as imprinted by Wittgenstein
.
Conradi, Peter J. Iris Murdoch. A Life. HarperCollins.
263
She reached Cambridge just too late...
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...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Sara Maitland
This genre seems almost impossible in the late twentieth century, but the authors believe that saints today are potentially spiritual resources whose presences through the traces they have left behind in the minds of the...
Textual Production
Edith Lyttelton
EL
also wrote two one-act morality plays: her Christmas Morality Play was published by E. Mathews
in 1908, and Dame Julian
's Window was produced by the Morality Play Society
at London's Little Theatre
on...
Textual Features
Jane Lead
She said she wrote for all Ranks, Orders, and Degrees of Persons, from the highest to the lowest.
Lead, Jane. A Fountain of Gardens. Printed and are to be sold by the book-sellers of London and Westminster.
3: 1, A2r
Her language is direct, but visually and imaginatively vivid, marked with the rhythms of...
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., Penguin.
58, 305n1
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., Penguin.
78
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.
134
She felt her unhappiness as a child and young woman was good for...
Textual Features
Elizabeth Jennings
Every Changing Shape was reprinted in 1996 by Carcanet Press
with a foreword by Michael Schmidt
. It collects essays on Christian writers and mystics that address the way that faith informs the creative imagination...
Timeline
After 18 March 1954: English-educated, American historical or...
Writing climate item
After 18 March 1954
English-educated, American historical or biographicalnovelist Anya Seton
issued her best-known work, Katherine, about the commoner from whom descends every English monarch since Henry VII
.
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.
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.
