Exploring the Relationship between Emotions, Language and Space: Construals of Awe in Medieval English Language and Pilgrimage Experience

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Notes

¹ This study has been supported by the research projects PII-2014-015-A and FFI-2013-4553-C3-2-P.

² Following Arnold’s (1960) classical definition of this concept, I will use the term appraisal in order to refer to the qualitative features that distinguish emotions from each other, resulting in action tendencies which we experience as emotions. See also Ellsworth and Scherer (2003) for a full discussion of the origins and developments of appraisal theory.

³ I have been unable to use Kay and Robert’s (1995) Thesaurus of Old English (TOE) for this research, in so far as it does not include a specific section on OE awe-words and expressions. Most of the lexemes analyzed in my study are included in the 06.01.08.06 Fear section of the TOE; in fact, as shall be seen later, most OE awe-words convey both meanings, and it is frequently hard, or even impossible, to determine the exact nuance of each instance.

⁴ The terms expression and etymological theme are taken from Gevaert (2002) and Geeraerts and Gevaert (2008).

⁵ Birnbaum (2015: 121) considers this occurrence of OE aswarcian glossing Latin revereri a scribal error for OE aswarnian ‘to be confounded, ashamed’. However, in this research I will assume the possibility that OE aswarcian ‘to stand in awe’ is a metonymic extension from OE aswarcian ‘to grow sluggish, enfeebled, faint’, sluggishness being a frequent source domain for emotion expressions (as in, for example, anger is a burden, sadness is lack of vitality and fear is freezing/physical paralysis; Kövecses 2000).

⁶ The specific awe-readings of these polysemic emotion words will be treated here as hyperonyms within the general polysemic network.

⁷ Apparently, beauty is the only awe-appraisal that is not encoded in any of the lexemes rendering ‘awe’ in Anglo-Saxon texts. According to the OED, a clear connection between the English word wonder and the reading ‘aesthetic beauty’ cannot be established until the Modern English period (normally in the collocation ‘a wonder of beauty’, first recorded in 1855).

⁸ Wells’ description of the early medieval pilgrim tour is based both on the analysis of coeval sources (such as William Fitzstephen’s biography of Thomas More) and on contemporary scholarly reconstructions.

⁹ Unfortunately, no information on the topics depicted originally in the eastern window is available. The modern window (dated 1896) depicts 21 characters that were considered important in the history of the cathedral, from King Ethelbert of Kent (top-left) to Queen Victoria (down-right). The chronological arrangement of the characters clearly contradicts the status is up metaphor conveyed by most Gothic stained glass windows.

¹⁰ In 1220, Becket’s corpse was relocated from the Norman crypt to a shrine in Trinity Chapel, where it stood until 1538, when it was destroyed on orders of Henry VIII (Barlow 2004).

¹¹ Saint Thomas’s blood had proven miraculous just one week after his death, when the first miraculous healing attributed to the saint took place in Canterbury (Slocum 2004: 92–93).

¹² The Latin inscription on this 12th century ampulla reads ‘+ OPTIM EGROR MEDIC FIT TOMA BONOR’, i.e. ’Thomas is the best doctor for the worthy sick.’

¹³ According to Scott, whereas for the early Christians the most valued relics were those “of the whole skeleton and all of the remains associated with the saint, all contained within a single tomb” (2006: 218), medieval theologians embraced the idea that the part and the whole had the same properties.

¹⁴ Pictures of most of these stained glass windows are publicly available from the website The Rose Window (http://www.therosewindow.com/pilot/Canterbury/table.htm).

¹⁵ Based on her study of the narrative structure of the windows, Todd (2007: 9) proposes an alternative route from north to south. According to her reconstructions, after the translation of the saint’s shrine in 1220, pilgrims ascended the south steps and immediately crossed the west end of the chapel, stopping first in front of the newly relocated shrine. Although the actual direction of this part of the tour is not fully relevant for my analysis, I assume that Todd’s hypothesis is more than plausible and that pilgrims were probably shown the Life Windows first and the Miracle Windows later even before 1220.

¹⁶ Interestingly, some of the Miracle Windows (especially N:III and N:IV) include healing scenes depicting pilgrims using the holy water contained in vials identical to those on sale in the crypt. Also, references to the uselessness of medical treatments abound in the inscriptions that adorn some of these images.

¹⁷ Whether the monks accompanied the last part of the tour with music or chimings of bells remains unfortunately unknown. Similarly, it would be very appealing, but highly tentative, to speculate about, for example, the emotional and cognitive effects of smells (e.g. of burning incense, hot wax, the stuffy air in the crowded crypt) and tastes (e.g. of the mix of water and blood in the vials) medieval pilgrims were exposed to during their tour of the cathedral.