Papers by Therese Novotny
JULIAN OF NORWICH: VOICING THE VERNACULAR Therese Novotny, B.A., M.A. Marquette University, 2015 ... more JULIAN OF NORWICH: VOICING THE VERNACULAR Therese Novotny, B.A., M.A. Marquette University, 2015 Julian of Norwich (1342-1416), the subject of my dissertation, was a Christian mystic whose writings, Revelation of Love and A Book of Showings, are the earliest surviving texts in the English language written by a woman. The question that has puzzled scholars is how could a woman of her time express her vision in such innovative and literary language? The reason scholars have puzzled over this for centuries is that women had been denied access to traditional education. Some scholars have answered this problem through close textual comparisons linking her text to those in the patristic tradition or through modern feminist theory. The result has been that each scholar has interpreted her text in narrow constructs linked to his or her own theories. Yet, wider forms of education can account for her innovative language. I argue that she drew from a rich reservoir of rhetorical models readily...
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Papers by Therese Novotny