Julian, God, and the Art of Storytelling
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Godelinde Gertrude Perk Umeå Studies in Language and Literature 32 Department of Language Studies Umeå University, Sweden Celebrated for her compassionate theology and subtle, subversive imagery, Julian of Norwich (c. 1343 – c. 1416), the earliest known woman writer in the English language, is also an accomplished storyteller. This study explores and compares the narrative strategies found in her two accounts of her visionary experience, A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman and A Revelation of Love. Reading these two non-fiction texts as narratives, this analysis and the Art Julian, God, of Storytelling 2016 Umeå University, brings Julian’s stories into dialogue with the narratives of her own time, Middle English literary theory, modern narratology, and the texts’ attention to their own telling. This reveals that Revelation includes, expands and transforms the plot, point of view, and characterization of Vision, while Revelation simultaneously implo- des these narrative structures to hint at greater, divine structures. By creating a poetics of developing and enveloping in Revelation, Julian strategically depicts herself, God and the reader as charac- ters in each other’s narratives and as participating in each other’s storytelling: she authorizes her own story by making it God’s and the reader’s as well. Cover: ‘St. Columba of Sens and St. Mary of Egypt holding books and palms,’ detail of early thirteenth-century French miniature in MS KB 76 F 5, f. 34v (Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague). Godelinde Gertrude Perk Julian, God, and the Art of Storytelling A Narrative Analysis of the Works of Julian of Norwich Department of Language Studies Umeå Studies in Language and Literature 32 Umeå Universitet Department of Language Studies SE-901 87 Umeå Umeå University, 2016 www.sprak.umu.se ISBN 978-91-7601-566-7 Julian, God and the Art of Storytelling A Narrative Analysis of the Works of Julian of Norwich Godelinde Gertrude Perk Umeå Studies in Language and Literature 32 Department of Language Studies Umeå University, 2016 Institutionen för språkstudier Umeå universitet SE -901 87 Umeå http://www.sprak.umu.se Studier i språk och litteratur från Umeå universitet 32. © 2016. Godelinde Gertrude Perk Omslag: Jan Willem den Bok. Tryckt av: UmU -Tryckservice Distributör: eddy.se ab, Visby Detail of miniature: Den Haag, Koninklijke Bibliotheek MS KB 76 F 5, f. 34v Reproduced with permission of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek. ISBN 978 -91-7601-566-7 Digital version available from DiVA: http://umu.diva-portal.org/ This work is protected by the Swedish Copyright Legislation (Act 1960:729) To ‘alle my evencristen’ from Pusey House, and my friends at work. 3 Contents Abstract 7 Sammanfattning på Svenska 8 Introduction 13 Narrative Strategies in Vision and Revelation 14 A Poetics of Developing and enveloping 18 A Dialogue between Modern, Medieval and Julian’s Narratology 20 Envisioning Medieval Storytelling and Creativity 25 Julian’s Plotting, Focalizing and Characterizing. 26 ‘The ‘Happy Virgin’ or a Grieving Widow and Mother 28 Revising a Vision by Revealing a Revelation 35 The World Outside the Anchorhold of the Text 37 Scholarly Responses to Vision and Revelation 41 1. Plot: ‘I Lede All Thing to the End that I Ordaine it To’ 45 A Plot Instead of Chance or ‘Aventure’ 47 From Classical Mythos to Modern Plot 49 The Uses of Plot 50 From One Vision to Sixteen Revelations 54 From Passion to Daily Psychomachia : Vision ’s Linear Plot 59 Medieval and Modern Narrative Desire 60 Linear Plot at Fabula Level 65 A Divine Reluctance to Fulfil Julian’s Wishes 69 Psychomachia on Fabula Level 72 Wele and Wo 72 Linear Plot at Story Level 78 Forthleding Character Julian and the Evencristen : Ductus and the Paths of Nature and Art 79 Linear Plot at Story and Text Level 83 Effect 89 Garland upon Garland: Revelation ’s Circular Plot 90 Seeing Into Christ to See Like Christ: Circular Plot at Fabula Level 91 Julian’s Intellectual, Emotional ‘Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachtani’ 96 Circling Back from the Exemplum to ‘All the Hole Revelation’. 99 A Circular Fabula of Years of Wondering 102 Beginning, Middle, Beginning? Circular Plot at Fabula Level 103 A Preview of the Beginning: Circular Plot at Story Level 105 Trusting the Fall 106 Knitting in the Round: Circularity at Text Level 109 Effect 115 ‘Ordained to Fro Withoute Beginning’ : Revelation ’s Omnitemporal, Non-sequential Plot 118 4 Fragmenting Time and Order: Omnitemporality at Fabula Level 119 God’s Omnitemporal Plotting 121 Many Exempla , One Lord and Servant: Omnitemporality at Story and Text Level 123 Effect 133 Conclusion 134 2. Focalization: ‘Now Thou Seest It’ 137 Focalization 138 Medieval Optics in Devotional Culture 141 Closer to Christ than Mary 148 Subsuming Mary’s Unwavering Focalization into Communal Focalization 153 Exchanging Looks: More Interactive Focalization 156 The Visionary Vanishes 164 Grasping with Avisement 166 An Alternative Meditative Focalization 169 Universalizing and Sanctifying the Female Anchoritic Gaze 169 Reshaping Human Focalization to Show a Glimpse of God’s 170 Training the Evencristen to Grasp With Avisement 180 Conclusion 183 3. Characterization: ‘But His Foreseeing Perpos…Wolde That We Were Doubil’ 189 From a Single V isionary to a ‘Doubil’ Author 191 Establishing Auctoritas and Facilitating Discretio Spirituum 192 The Penitential Characterization Grid and Revelation ’s own Circumstantiae 194 Constructing the Divine 196 ‘We Are Alle Ane’: Vision ’s Strategic Avoidance of Doubleness198 An (A)Typical Visionary 198 Including Contemplatives, Excluding the Evencristen 203 ‘Which Sight Was Shewed Double in the Lord, and…Double in the Servant’: Doubleness in Revelation ’ 206 Of One Substance with One Another 208 Making Julian a Sensual Sinner 210 Enfolding All Into the Twofold Evencristen 216 The ‘Properte of Motherhed’ (Rev. 58. 17) 221 Three Persons, One Substantial Motherhood 223 Trinitarian Mothering to the Sensuality 229 Cross-dressing Christ: Christ as Mother to the Sensuality 232 Speaking ‘Fair, Lovely Worde[s]’ to the Sensuality 236 An Insubstantial Monster 237 Fiendishly Substanceless Rattling 241 Changing the Fiend into an Unchangeable Hothead 243 Double Auctoritas and Do-it-Yourself Discretio Spirituum 245 5 Shared Longing and Hints of Heavenly Unity in Revelation 246 The Lonely Servant Once More 247 ‘Fro the Paine…Into the Blisse’: Human Hints of Heavenly Unity 249 The Yearning, Performing Text 250 Conclusion 251 Conclusion: A Story by Julian, Told to Julian 253 Julian’s Narrative Strategies 254 Medieval Creativity 257 Enriching Narratology 259 An Endless Story Without Beginning 264 Works Cited 265 Primary Sources 265 Translations 266 Secondary Sources 267 Index 280 Acknowledgements 282 Studier i språk och litteratur från Umeå universitet 284 6 Abstract This study offers a narrative comparison of A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman and A Revelation of Love , the two texts created by the first known English woman writer, Julian of Norwich (c. 1343 – c. 1416). It focuses Julian as a storyteller rather than as a theologian, mystic or visionary, concentrating particular on her narrative strategies, that is, on the strategic use of formal narrative features and the changes in these between Vision and Revelation . This dissertation therefore examines Vision and Revelation in terms of three narrative features: plot, characterization and perspective or point of view (termed ‘focalization’ here). T hese three narrative features are brought into dialogue with Julian’s theology. Three analytical angles help shed more light on Julian’s innovative use of these structures in her works: modern narratology, Middle English literary theory and practice, and the texts’ own literary concepts and self -referential comments. Two central narratological methods are used throughout. The first is to make a distinction between narrator Julian, who tells about the events, and character Julian, who experiences the events. The second is distinguishing several hermeneutic layers or levels of signification in a narrative. Following narratologist Mieke Bal, this discussion distinguishes between fabula (the raw material), story (the content of the text) and text (the linguistic construct). On the basis of this exploration, this study argues that Revelation includes, expands and transforms the narrative structures of Vision , and thereby consciously draws more attention to the structures themselves. At the same time, however, within Revelation a similar narrative reshaping can be seen as between Vision and Revelation . That is, Revelation reshapes its own new narrative structures, in order to hint at God’s greater structure and envelop its own in His. This greatest structure, however, is only glimpsed. As regards these narrative structures, this study argues that linear finite narrative desire driving the plot of Vision is taken up into an endless, greater narrative desire in Revelation , creating a circular plot. At the same time, narrator Julian constructs an omnitemporal, non-sequential plot. Moreover, this analysis shows that the focalization already found in Vision is made more demonstrative in Revelation , while the narrator directs this gaze more towards the apophatic and what is always hidden. Finally, this study explores how many of the characters from Vision are made twofold in Revelation, while Revelation at the same time foreshadows the union this doubleness will achieve at the end of time. Revelation, in short, utilizes Vision ’s structures and its own to implode structure. Julian’s poetics thus is one of continuous developing and enveloping, which allows her to depict God, herself and the reader as characters in each other’s narratives and as participating in each other’s storytelling: she authorizes her own story by making it God’s and the reader’s as well. This more conscious structuring and simultaneous reshaping of the new structure in Revelation forms Julian’s most innovative narrative strategy and the most striking interaction between her art and theology: narrator Julian depicts her own storytelling as simultaneously participating in that of God and foreshadowing God’s ultimate storytelling at the end of time.