The Embodied Word

Nancy Bradley Warren

Description

In The Embodied Word: Female Spiritualities, Contested Orthodoxies, and English Religious Cultures, 1350-1700, Nancy Bradley Warren expands on the topic of female spirituality, first explored in her book Women of God and Arms, to encompass broad issues of religion, gender, and historical periodization. Through her analyses of the variety of ways in which medieval spirituality was deliberately and actively carried forward to the early modern period, Warren underscores both continuities and revisions that challenge conventional distinctions between medieval and early modern culture.

The early modern writings of Julian of Norwich are an illustrative starting point for Warren's challenge to established views of English religious cultures. In a single chapter, Warren follows the textual and devotional practices of Julian as they influence two English Benedictine nuns in exile, and then Grace Mildmay, a seventeenth-century Protestant gentry woman, "to shed light on the ways in which individual encounters of the divine, especially gendered bodily encounters expressed textually, signify for others both personally and socio-historically." In subsequent chapters, Warren discusses St. Birgitta of Sweden's Imitatio Christi in the context of the importance of Spain and Spanish women in shaping a distinctive form of early modern Englishness strongly aligned with medieval religious culture; juxtaposes the fifteenth-century mystic Margery Kempe with the life and writings of Anna Trapnel, a seventeenth-century Baptist; and treats Catherine of Siena together with the Protestant Anne Askew and Lollard and Recusant women. In the final chapters she focuses on the interplay of gender and textuality in women's textual representations of themselves and in works written by men who used the traditions of female spirituality in the service of competing orthodoxies.

Sujets

• Literary Criticism
• Medieval
• Idioma inglés
• Idioma galés
• Edad Media
• Culture of England
• Anna Trapnell
• Anne Askew
• The Imitation of Christ (book)
• Julian of Norwich
• Middle Ages
• Irish
• English
• Catherine of Siena
• European
• Margery Kempe
• Welsh
• Scottish
• Musique irlandaise
• Anglais

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 15 novembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268096687
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

The Embodied Word

m e d i e va l a n d e a r l y m o d e r n

Series Editors: David Aers, Sarah Beckwith, and James Simpson

N A N C Y B R A D L E Y W A R R E N

The Embodied Word

Female Spiritualities, Contested Orthodoxies, and English Religious Cultures, 1350 – 1700

University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana

Copyright © 2010 by the University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, Indiana 46556 www.undpress.nd.edu All Rights Reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Warren, Nancy Bradley. The embodied Word : female spiritualities, contested orthodoxies, and English religious cultures, 1350–1700 / Nancy Bradley Warren. p. cm. — (ReFormations, medieval and early modern) Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. isbn-13: 978-0-268-04420-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) isbn-10: 0-268-04420-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Christian women—Religious life —England—History. 2. Spirituality — England—History. 3. England— Church history. 4. Christian women— Religious life —Europe —History. 5. Spirituality —Europe —History. 6. Europe — Church history. 7. Women authors, English —Religious life — Europe —History. 8. Christian literature —Women authors —History and criticism. 9. Human body—Religious aspects —Christianity—History. I. Title. BR747.W37 2010 274.1'05082 — dc22 2010024341

∞The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.

For Norm Jones

Contents

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Acknowledgments

Introduction: From Corpse to Corpus The Incarnational and the International: St. Birgitta of Sweden, St. Catherine of Siena, Julian of Norwich, and Aemilia Lanyer Medieval Legacies and Female Spiritualities across the “Great Divide”: Julian of Norwich, Grace Mildmay, and the English Benedictine Nuns of Cambrai and Paris Embodying the “Old Religion” and Transforming the Body Politic: The Brigittine Nuns of Syon, Luisa de Carvajal y Mendoza, and Exiled Women Religious during the English Civil War Women’s Life Writing, Women’s Bodies, and the Gendered Politics of Faith: Margery Kempe, Anna Trapnel, and Elizabeth Cary

The Embodied Presence of the Past: Medieval History, Female Spirituality, and Traumatic Textuality, 1570–1700

Notes Index

ix

1

19

61

97

147

193

241 325

Acknowledgments

This is a b ook that in man y respec ts c en ters on c ommun ities, and it has been my pleasure to be part of many supportive and nurturing communities in the process of writing it. I want to begin by thanking the two communities to whom I owe, in so many ways, the most: Florida State University and the National Humanities Center. I am grateful to the Council on Research and Creativity at Florida State University for a Planning Grant, an Arts and Humanities Program Enhancement Grant, and a grant from the Committee on Faculty Research for summer salary support. These grants enabled me to conduct the necessary archival re- search for this book. The National Humanities Center gave me a fellow- ship during the 2007–8 academic year that enabled me to complete much of the writing of this book. One of the true highlights of my professional life thus far, the fellowship provided not only material support for the writing of the book but also extraordinary intellectual enrichment. I thus want to extend a special thank-you to all the members of the 2007 – 8 class of fellows for your useful questions, wonderful conversations, and warm collegiality. Additionally, I want to thank all of the staff of the Na- tional Humanities Center for their friendship and kindness. Having a fellow deliver her second child on the first day of her fellowship, as I did, did not faze them at all!

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