Revising the Body in Julian of Norwich's Revelations

Abstract:This article argues that Julian consistently alludes to her initial bodily and visionary experience in revising the Short Text into the Long Text in order to mark the importance of bodily suffering as part of her spiritual transformation. Julian refers to these moments as astonishment, drawing on a medieval understanding of a combined sensory and cognitive deprivation that precedes insight. This is most apparent in the Parable of the Lord and Servant in which Julian frames the vision with her own bodily experience, implicitly translating her own pain into the parable's servant.