Julian of Norwich's Showings and the Ancrene Riwle: Two Rhetorical Configurations of Mysticism

Abstract

Many medieval women mystics undermined misogyny with persuasive eloquence. This essay does a comparative rhetorical analysis of Julian of Norwich's Showings and the Ancrene Riwle, positing that the fourteenth-century English mystic knew the twelfth-century text and developed her theology, in part, as a corrective to its Augustinian dogma.

Notes

¹ Rhetoric Review reviewers James Murphy and Jan Swearingen provided patient, meticulous guidance through revisions of this essay.

²For example, Paulist Press publishes works by Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Avila, Gertrude of Helfta, Bridget of Sweden, and others.

³See Baker's discussion, 125–26, of Augustine's De Trinitate, Book 12.

⁴I Corinthians 14:34; I Timothy 2: 11–12.

⁵Luke 9:10.

⁶My translations preserve syntactical and semantic elements wherever possible. Julian's Short Version is abbreviated as SV and the Long as LV.

⁷By the late fourteenth century, Latin technical terms of grammar and rhetoric were anglicized (Irvine and Thompson). Moreover, Julian probably developed an ear for technê listening to sermons through a sanctuary portal in the church where she was immured.

⁸Colledge and Walsh observe that Julian uses a rare form of the word food here (“soule,” or “sufol”), perhaps punning on the same form in the Riwle. Footnote 35, LV 306.

⁹Luke 4:2–13.