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Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 July 2013

E.A. Jones
Affiliation:
University of Exeter
E. A. Jones
Affiliation:
University of Exeter
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Summary

After a longer than anticipated break in the series, the eighth Exeter Symposium took place at Charney Manor in Oxfordshire, between 17 and 20 July 2011. The twelve papers that formed the basis for discussions at the Symposium are collected here.

As always, the canonical ‘Middle English Mystics’ are represented: indeed, there is a ‘full house’ of Richard Rolle, Walter Hilton, the Cloud-author, Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe. The volume begins with Vincent Gillespie's exploration of light, colour and sight in Julian of Norwich. Over the past twenty years, literary scholars have been demonstrating the possibilities of medieval optical theory as an interpretative angle on Middle English poetry, but (even though contemplatio is at root a matter of looking) Gillespie's is the first sustained and detailed attempt to bring perspectival optics, theories of intromission and extramission (and various syntheses of the two), and distinctions between light as it is perceived and the transcendent Light, to one of our mystical authors. Julian, not for the first time, emerges as an extraordinarily well-informed, as well as theologically and philosophically subtle, thinker.

Gillespie's occasional collaborator in work on Julian (including the important and ever-stimulating essay on ‘The Apophatic Image’ in MMTE V), Maggie Ross, writes on beholding, a word often used as a thoughtless synonym for seeing, but which, in its biblical and medieval usage, indicates more than that, a kind of silent and reverent receptivity.

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The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England
Papers Read at Charney Manor, July 2011 [Exeter Symposium 8]
, pp. 1 - 6
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2013

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  • Introduction
  • Edited by E. A. Jones, University of Exeter
  • Book: The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England
  • Online publication: 05 July 2013
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  • Introduction
  • Edited by E. A. Jones, University of Exeter
  • Book: The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England
  • Online publication: 05 July 2013
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Introduction
  • Edited by E. A. Jones, University of Exeter
  • Book: The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England
  • Online publication: 05 July 2013
Available formats
×