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Castles of the Mind
Why does Tertullian compare virginity to a citadel? Why does Birgitta say that the Virgin Mary is like the Temple of Solomon? And why does Chaucer symbolise love and fame through a rich Gothic-style palace? All of these metaphors are part of a literary tradition that employs architecture as a symbolic structure representing a wide range of ideological systems, from fame and honour, to love and church community. Divided into two parts, this study examines the use of architecture for allegorical representation in two literary traditions which Whitehead labels Christian and classicising, dating from antiquity to the end of the Middle Ages.
The Afterlife of St Cuthbert
This book surveys the textual representation of Cuthbert, the premier northern English saint, from the seventh to fifteenth centuries.
Cushions, Kitchens and Christ
This book represents the first full-length study of the prevalence of domestic imagery in late medieval religious literature. It examines as yet understudied patterns of household imagery and allegory across four fifteenth-century spiritual texts, all of which are Middle English translations of earlier Latin works. These texts are drawn from a range of popular genres of medieval religious writing, including the spiritual guidance text, Life of Christ, and collection of revelations received by visionary women. All of the texts discussed in this book have identifiable late medieval readers, which further enables a discussion of the way in which these book users might have responded to the domestic images in each one. This is a hugely important area of enquiry, as the literal late medieval household was becoming increasingly culturally important during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and these texts’ frequent recourse to domestic imagery would have been especially pertinent.
The Doctrine of the Hert
A religious bestseller, the "Doctrina" was circulated throughout Europe between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries and was translated into six different languages. This book examines thinking upon the "Doctrina's" authorship and envisaged primary audience.
The Garden of Slender Trust
Christiania Whitehead's garden is walled like a medieval retreat, a place of imaginative seclusion where she confronts tensions between living faith and lived sensual life. Her poetry is as much filled with wonder and transcendence as with the pleasures and perils of flesh and friendship. Shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection.
Authority and the Female Body in the Writings of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe
The three archetypal representations of woman in the middle ages, as mother, as whore and as 'wise woman', are all clearly present in the writings of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe; in examining the ways in which both writers make use of these female categories, Dr. McAvoy establishes the extent of their success in resolving the tension between society's expectations of them and their own lived experiences as women and writers."--Jacket.
Writing Religious Women
This collection of commissioned essays explores women's vernacular theology through a wide range of medieval prose and verse texts, from saints' lives to visionary literature. Employing a historicist methodology, the essays are sited at the intersection of two discursive fields: female spiritual practice and female textual practice. The contributors are primarily interested in the relation of women to religious books, as writers, receivers, and as objects of representation. They focus on historical approaches to the question of women's spirituality, and generically unrestricted examinations of issues of female literacy, book ownership, and reading practice. The essays are grouped under four main themes: the influence of anchoritic spirituality upon later lay piety, Carthusian links with female spirituality, the representation of femininity in Anglo-Norman and Middle English religious poetry, and veneration, performance and delusion in the Book of Margery Kempe.
Mary Magdalene and the Drama of Saints
A sinner-saint who embraced then renounced sexual and worldly pleasures; a woman who, through her attachment to Jesus, embodied both erotic and sacred power; a symbol of penance and an exemplar of contemplative and passionate devotion: perhaps no figure stood closer to the center of late medieval debates about the sources of spiritual authority and women's contribution to salvation history than did Mary Magdalene, and perhaps nowhere in later medieval England was cultural preoccupation with the Magdalene stronger than in fifteenth-century East Anglia. Looking to East Anglian texts including the N-Town Plays, The Book of Margery Kempe, The Revelations of Julian of Norwich, and Bokenham's Lege...
Transformative Waters in Late-medieval Literature
A consideration of the metaphor of water in religious literature, especially in relation to women.
The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Mysticism
The widespread view that 'mystical' activity in the Middle Ages was a rarefied enterprise of a privileged spiritual elite has led to isolation of the medieval 'mystics' into a separate, narrowly defined category. Taking the opposite view, this book shows how individual mystical experience, such as those recorded by Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe, is rooted in, nourished and framed by the richly distinctive spiritual contexts of the period. Arranged by sections corresponding to historical developments, it explores the primary vernacular texts, their authors, and the contexts that formed the expression and exploration of mystical experiences in medieval England. This is an excellent, insightful introduction to medieval English mystical texts, their authors, readers and communities. Featuring a guide to further reading and a chronology, the Companion offers an accessible overview for students of literature, history and theology.
