Julian of Norwich: A Book of Essays (review)

Reviews 227 comparisons to other visual examples, found in manuscripts and sculpture, rather than general statements concerning what to expect in medieval art. Lewis is more interested in comparing the tapestry to chansons de gestes rather than to the full-page narrative sequences found in Ottonian manuscripts, for example. It is true that scholars such as David Bernstein have already drawn on near-contemporary visual examples, while Lewis is more interested in using a specifically poststructuralist approach. Yet surely with the growing popularity of 'visual culture' as a m o d e of analysis, the tapestry provides us with an opportunity to re-examine such theoretic approaches in what is, after all, an amalgam of both the visual and the textual. This is, however, a minor quibble concerning a densely-argued and richly stimulating essay. Judith Collard Department ofArt History and Theory University ofOtago McEntire, Sandra J., ed., Julian of Norwich: A Book of Essays (Garland Medieval Casebooks 21), N e w York and London, Garland, 1998; board; pp. xxi, 341; R.R.P. US$70.00. Sandra McEntire as editor notes a shift away from 'fundamentalist' interpretations in this excellent volume of n e w approaches to Julian and some important elaborations of central theological issues she raises. McEntire's own essay considers "The Likeness of God and the Restoration of Humanity' as Julian negotiates a radical unconformity with patriarchal and theological authority; following Bakhtin, McEntire argues that mystical texts create a dialogical form between the inherited word and 'one's own' (p. 4). Thus Julian rewrites the Genesis story into a revisiting of the Adam-Eve-Mother-Jesus nexus, something which becomes important in other essays in the collection. Denise Baker's discussion encapsulates the central argument of her Mian ofNorwich's Showings: From Vision to Book (1994). Here in 'The Image of God: Contrasting Configurations' she uses Walter Hilton's Scale of Perfection to compare h o w Julian, in effect, interrogates Hilton's traditional recapitulation of the imago Dei. A s each develops their commonly inherited 228 Reviews theology, Julian's true originality is shown in her sense that the movement between a person and God is bi-directional; each permeates the other. Cynthea Masson in 'The Point of Coincidence: Rhetoric and the Apophatic in Julian of Norwich's Showings' writes similarly of a rhetorically structured crossing-over, which will 'gesture toward an unknown and ineffable God [in] the paradox associated with the apophatic moment or point of interchange between the h u m a n and the divine' (p. 155). Thus Julian negotiates a 'point' discursively; Masson considers the word poynte, both temporally and spatially, as a human-divine chiasmus. A n elegant if oddly titled article by Susan Hagan also addresses Julian's writing process. 'St Cecilia and St John of Beverly: Julian of Norwich's Early Model and Late Affirmation' uses the dis/appearance of those figures to emphasise the newly evident teaching function of the Long Text in (amongst other things) the Julian use of visual images as mnemonic; hence the hazelnut, to be associated with three points of wisdom recalled within the 'eye' of memory. Alexandra Barratt's discussion also includes the hazelnut, since a hazelnut, it turns out, was a c o m m o n medical and culinary measurement. 'In the Lowest Part of Our Need: Julian and Medieval Gynecological Writing' draws on gynecological and obstetrics texts which relate female sickness and pain to Christ's physical sufferings and purgation. In addition medieval understandings of sexuality and motherhood should undergird our sense of Julian's theological use of them. In Leaving the W o m b of Christ: Love, Doomsday and Space/Time in Julian of Norwich and Eastern Orthodox Mysticism', Brant Pelphrey writes that 'Orthodox theologians have noted that [Julian's] theology i s neither scholastic on the one hand, nor emotional on the other—two problems which, from an Orthodox perspective, tend to mar the spiritual writings of the Christian West' (p. 293). H e suggests that the Pascal Vigil's evocation of felix culpa (in the Sarum liturgy) is the source for 'sin is behovely' (p. 310). Jay Ruud writing on Iwoldefor thy louedye: 'Julian, Romance...