“What Shall I Call You?” (with Julian of Norwich)¹

1 I have approached this process as an autofiction and so am loath to interrupt its flow with in-text or footnotes. There is a good deal of scholarship about Julian’s erudition and its sources, and I have taken care, as best I am able, to have her refer only to works she could ordinarily be expected to have known. When she—or in one instance the Michael character—allude to others’ works in their colloquy, the text is italicized. So, for the few places where the Julian character quotes common expressions or texts or her own Shewings here, I have, with the generous assent of the editors, adopted the scheme of noting them below sequentially and then listing sources in the References.

ABSTRACT

Julian of Norwich (1342–1430), anchorite and seer, was, according to the twentieth-century mystic poet and monk Thomas Merton, “one of the most wonderful of all Christian voices” and “with Newman the greatest English theologian.” Her Shewings, or Revelations of Divine Love, are an account, meditation, and teaching proceeding from sixteen visions she experienced on a single day in May of 1373. This “Soundproof Room” encounter takes the form of a mild creole of medieval and postmodern English of the sort that in prior works, most notably Paris Views and Foucault in Winter, in the Linnaeus Garden, the author has called “mixed language.” Here also the author takes his cue from Merton’s reputed avowal that “Rather than ‘Sister’, one calls her the ‘Lady Julian’,” by making dialogue a like instance of seeking how to address another.

KEYWORDS:

• Julian
• Norwich
• shewings
• dialogue
• theology
• vision

Acknowledgements

I am deeply grateful for, and have benefited here from, having read Amy Frykholm’s autofiction, Julian of Norwich: A Contemplative Biography (Paraclete, 2010), which not only gave me an intimate sense of the quotidian life of its subject but also gave me the courage to undertake this dialogue. I only wish that my writing here had lived up to the sprightly simplicity and spiritual clarity of Frykholm’s work. I am also deeply grateful to my colleagues, Professor Mark Amodio and Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow Dr Erin Sweany both of whom helped me work through Middle English phrases and ideas beyond the ken of one who has never studied the subject. Erin’s generous and comprehensive notes were a true shewing and I am especially thankful, as I suspect will be readers here, for her graceful translations of quoted Middle English texts. I apologize for my mistakings both to Mark and Erin as well as to their colleagues in the field whom this creole riff of mine must surely shock.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Michael Joyce’s fourteen books and several digital works—most recently the novel Remedia: a picaresque (Steerage, 2018) and the poems A Hagiography of Heaven and Vicinity (Broadstone, 2017)—span a career as novelist, poet, critic, theorist, digital literature pioneer, and multimedia artist. He is Professor of English and Media Studies at Vassar College.

Notes

1 I have approached this process as an autofiction and so am loath to interrupt its flow with in-text or footnotes. There is a good deal of scholarship about Julian’s erudition and its sources, and I have taken care, as best I am able, to have her refer only to works she could ordinarily be expected to have known. When she—or in one instance the Michael character—allude to others’ works in their colloquy, the text is italicized. So, for the few places where the Julian character quotes common expressions or texts or her own Shewings here, I have, with the generous assent of the editors, adopted the scheme of noting them below sequentially and then listing sources in the References.