Willing to Know God

Willing to KnoW god Willing to Know God dreamerS and viSionarieS in the later middle ageS Jessica Barr t h e o hio State Univer S i t y P r e ss · C o l U m b us Copyright © 2010 by The Ohio State University. All rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Barr, Jessica (Jessica Gail), 1976– Willing to know God : dreamers and visionaries in the later Middle Ages / Jessica Barr. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8142-1127-4 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8142-1127-5 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-8142-9226-6 (cd-rom) 1. Literature, Medieval—History and criticism. 2. Visions in literature. 3. Dreams in literature. 4. Marguerite, d’Oingt, ca. 1240–1310—Criticism and interpretation. 5. Gertrude, the Great, Saint, 1256–1302—Criticism and interpretation. 6. Julian, of Norwich, b. 1343—Criti- cism and interpretation. 7. Pearl (Middle English poem)—Criticism, Textual. 8. Langland, William, 1330?–1400? Piers Plowman—Criticism and interpretation. 9. Chaucer, Geoffrey, d. 1400. House of fame—Criticism and interpretation. 10. Kempe, Margery, b. ca. 1373. Book of Margery Kempe. I. Title. PN682.V57B37 2010 809ꞌ.93382—dc22 2010000392 This book is available in the following editions: Cloth (ISBN 978–0-8142–1127–4) CD-ROM (ISBN 978–0-8142–9226–6) Cover design by DesignSmith Type set in Times New Roman Printed by Thomson-Shore, Inc. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American Na- tional Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48–1992. 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 For my parents, Loel Ann Barr and William Douglas Barr Contents AcknoWledgmentS ix introduction 1 1 KnoWledge and the viSion in the middle ages 13 I. Active Understanding and the Rhetoric of Passivity 13 II. Knowing in the Middle Ages: Ratio and Intellectus 19 III. Education and Revelation as Paths to Dream Knowledge: Three Case Studies 23 2 MargUerite d’oingt: Active reading and the langUage of god 49 I. The Pagina Meditationum: Active Reading as Devotional Practice 51 II. The Speculum: Spiritual Imitation as Textual Emendation 55 III. Vehemens: Linguistic Understanding and Divine Truth 61 3 The Will to KnoW: volition and intelleCt in GertrUde of helfta 69 I. Liturgical Practice and the Union with God 71 II. The Role of the Will: Validating Intellectual Enquiry 89 4 The viSion Is not enoUgh: Active KnoWing in JUlian of norWiCh 96 I. Un-Gendering Knowledge: Affect and Intellect 99 II. “And yet I merveyled”: Reason’s Inadequacy and the Limits of Revelation 109 III. Knowing and the Body 115 viii · Contents 5 Worldly attaChment and viSionary reSiStanCe in PeArl 122 I. Materiality, Desire, and the Limits of Reason 126 II. The Jeweler’s Language of Resistance 133 III. The Will as Obstacle 139 IV. Mystical Renunciation and the Jeweler’s Desire 143 6 The CritiqUe of revelation in Piers PLoWmAn 152 I. Language and Sapientia in the Quest for Dowel 159 II. Allegories of the Faculties: The Trouble with Reason 171 III. Becoming a Fool: Unknowing to Know God 179 7 Discrediting the viSion: The house oF FAme 184 I. Unstable Authority: The Revelation that Never Comes 186 II. Uncertain Meanings: The Power of the Reader 196 III. Anxieties of Interpretation in Fame and the Visionary Tradition 203 8 KnoWledge Is PoWer: negotiating Authority in The Book oF Margery kemPe 208 I: Fact or Fiction: Generic Considerations 210 II: “To answer euery clerke”: Margery’s Problems with Authority 214 III: The Doubting Saint: Affirmations of Holiness and the Audience of the Book 224 epilogue 232 bibliograPhy 245 index 257 acknowledgments I would like to thank the following friends, colleagues, and organizations for their help in the writing of this book. Above all, I thank Elizabeth J. Bryan, my advisor, mentor, and friend, whose critical eye constantly pushed me to strengthen and complicate my arguments. Without her, this book could not have been written. Likewise, the support and critical feedback of Michel-André Bossy, Joseph Pucci, and Susan Harvey encouraged—no, required—me to become a better scholar and writer. Their astute readings and wide-ranging knowledge has contributed enormously to this project. I also deeply appreciate the patience with which they approached the many versions of these (many) chapters. I am grateful to the members of the Brown University Mellon workshop on embodiment that convened in 2005–06: Jennifer Feather, Gill Frank, Jennifer Thomas, and Coppelia Kahn. Their questions and insights helped me to better articulate my argument, and Gill’s suggestion that we go on sharing drafts after the termination of the formal group provided a wonder- ful continuation of what had been a very constructive set of conversations. I thank the 2006–07 Fellows of the Cogut Center for the Humanities at Brown; the discussions that occurred in our weekly forum did much to stimulate my thinking and contributed directly to the development of my chapter on Chaucer. The editorial team at The Ohio State University Press, especially Mal- colm Litchfield and Eugene O’Connor, deserve great thanks for their help at every stage of the publication process. I am grateful to Chet Van Duzer as well for his meticulous copyediting. I especially thank Kathryn Lynch and the other, anonymous reader for their astute and critical suggestions. As readers of the manuscript for OSUP, they offered through, sharp, and extremely constructive criticisms that gave me a lot of work to do, but it is work that I am very glad to have done; this is a much better book for their comments. ix x · acknowledgments Further constructive feedback was provided by the readers for two jour- nals that reviewed individual chapters of this book for prior publication. An early version of my study of Marguerite d’Oingt was published by Mystics Quarterly in 2007, and the readers who critiqued it offered excellent suggestions for improving the article that would become chapter 2. I am also grateful to the readers at Modern Philology who reviewed the article that would become my chapter on Pearl. Although that article had to be with- drawn from Modern Philology’s publication queue due to the timing of this book’s publication, their suggested revisions ultimately resulted in a stron- ger, better argued, better written chapter 5. I greatly appreciate the time that all of these anonymous readers donated and the care with which they read and commented on my manuscripts. Such work, largely invisible as it is, is what makes scholarly conversation possible. In addition to intellectual prodding, the writing of this book has required time—time that was provided in large part through generous institutional support from the Department of Comparative Literature and the Cogut Cen- ter for the Humanities at Brown University. Oberlin College also helped to make this work possible with an Alumni Research Grant; I am very grateful to Oberlin for its continued support for its graduates. I am also very much indebted to the Richard III Society and the Medieval Academy of America for the Schallek Award that enabled me to bring the initial draft of this manuscript to completion. Finally, I thank Eureka College for providing me with the time and resources to prepare the manuscript for publication. For emotional support and much-needed distraction I thank my family: Loel Barr, Bill Barr, Pam Ross, and Alex and Faith Barr, as well as Jer ry Berke. Their constant love and support have been a source of great strength for me—not just through this project, but always. I also thank my friends, including (but not limited to) Hope Saska, Lilian O’Brien, and Jason D’Cruz, who kept me sane and happy. I thank my friends and colleagues at Eureka College for their interest and support. I thank Derek Ettinger, whose cheerful encouragement saw me through several years of writing and revision. And I thank Bill Wright, for his generosity and care and excellent conversation. Thank you. introduction ivine viSionS abound in medieval literature. Dante ascends to Paradise, innumerable saints and holy women hold intimate converse with representatives of the divine, D Margery Kempe lies in dalliance with Christ, and Langland’s Will observes the Harrowing of Hell in the course of his struggle to come to a “kynde knowing” of God. The widespread appearance of the vision in the literature of the later Middle Ages suggests that visions, if not actually common occurrences, were at least widely accepted as catalysts to spiritual development: the vision is often portrayed as having the capacity to effect a profound transformation in its recipient. A vivid illustration of the transformative potential of the vision can be found in the late fourteenth-century Showings of Julian of Norwich. Julian writes that, although she already believed in Christ and the teachings of the Church, when she was young she “desirede a bodilye sight” of the Passion, wishing to have more “felinge in the passion of Criste” than she already had.1 Her desixre for a “bodily sight”—a vision—is based on the assump- tion that such an experience would have a powerful effect on her faith and strengthen her devotion to God. Indeed, the visions that she then receives in her sickness fundamentally change her understanding of the divine; even her first vision, of the blood trickling down from under Jesus’ crown of thorns, awakens her to a new profundity of devotion and the assurance that “this was strengh enoughe to me—ye, unto alle creatures lye vande that shulde be safe—againes alle the feendes of helle and againes gostelye enmies.”2 Julian’s Showings indicates the powerful spiritual and affective 1.

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