NEWS Julian of Norwich (c. 1343 – c. 1416) was a highly skilled storyteller, who lived in a time when everyone, from priests to groups of devout women, told stories to one another. Julian surmounts different obstacles in her work by making God a storyteller like herself, and making her storytelling resemble the storytelling she lets God do. In a new dissertation by Godelinde Perk, Umeå university, shows how Julian of Norwich not only turns God into a mother, but also into her co-author and co-storyteller: she makes God tell her story.
Godelinde Perk Photo: Kim Buckard
Between the second half of the fourteenth century and the early fifteenth century Julian of Norwich wrote two intriguing texts in Middle English, A Vision Showed to A Devout Woman, and A Revelation of Love. These texts, both describing a series of visions from 1373, make her the earliest known woman writer of English.
“However, Julian is not only an accomplished argumentative writer and theologian, who portrays God as a loving mother, she is also a highly skilled storyteller, who lived in a time when everyone, from priests to groups of devout women, told stories to one another”, says Godelinde Perk and continues:
“Her storytelling, I argue, allows her to convince her contemporary readers of the reliability and authority of her texts, visions and theology; she does so because religious writing in the vernacular was associated with heresy, and because texts by female authors were often thought to lack literary and theological credibility”.
Julian surmounts these obstacles by making God a storyteller like herself, and making her storytelling resemble the storytelling she lets God do. She also turns herself, God and the reader into characters in each other’s stories. Her narrating thus allows her to think about God in a new way, and give her work theological and literary authority, because Julian’s story becomes the reader’s story and God’s story as well.
“In my study I compare A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman and A Revelation of Love to one another as stories, because the former is as it were a wholly new, expanded edition and re-telling of the latter. I compare them to stories Julian may have known, such as saints’ lives, medieval theatre, and stories about Christ’s life, but also to medieval literary theory, and Julian’s own comments on her telling".
The modern framework used consists of several concept from narratology, the theory of narrative. This exploration reveals that in A Revelation of Love Julian includes the plot, point of view, and characterization of Vision, but expands and transforms these story aspects as well.
At the same time, she makes these new versions of these structures part of even larger versions; these largest structures, which are only glimpsed, hint at God’s plot, point of view and characterization. In this way, Julian presents her own storytelling processes as resembling God’s authoring of world history. In sum, the first Englishwoman of letters not only turns God into a mother, but also into her co-author and co-storyteller: she makes God tell her story.
Digital version of the dissertation
Defence of the thesis will take place on Friday October 28 at 10 AM at The Humanities building, Lecture hall G.
Opponent: Professor Liz Herbert McAvoy, Department of English Literature and Creative Writing, Swansea University.
Godelinde Gertrude Perk, godelinde.perk@umu.se, tel. 090-786 67 92, +31642447395
Editor: Per Melander