IMC 2020: Sessions
Session 629: Enclosed for Life: The Rigidity (or Permeability) of Anchoritic Borders, II - Borders in Literature
Tuesday 7 July 2020, 11.15-12.45
| Sponsor: | International Anchoritic Society |
|---|---|
| Organiser: | Victoria Yuskaitis, Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Leeds |
| Moderator/Chair: | Alicia Smith, Queen's College, University of Oxford |
| Paper 629-a | Bordering Existence: Living Death in Julian of Norwich's Revelations (Language: English) Index terms: Language and Literature - Middle English, Medicine, Religious Life, Theology |
| Paper 629-b | Recurrent Terms and Expressions in Middle English Mystical Works as a Ritual (Language: English) Index terms: Language and Literature - Middle English, Religious Life, Rhetoric, Theology |
| Paper 629-c | Recluses in the City: Borders and the Urban Anchorhold (Language: English) Index terms: Daily Life, Religious Life, Sermons and Preaching |
| Abstract | Medieval anchorites were simultaneously enclosed within cells and exposed through the presence of these cells; restricted physically and unrestrained mentally; dead to the world and reliant upon the church community to fulfil their vocations. The walls of the anchorite cell have been described as tomb-like, but also as permeable via the few windows. Can a border exist without the potential for that boundary to be breached? Is there a difference between the rhetoric of borders and the lived experience of these boundaries? How were anchoritic borders created and maintained, and for what purpose - and what happened when these borders failed to function? |