Defense Date
10-20-2020
Graduation Date
Fall 12-18-2020
Availability
One-year Embargo
Submission Type
dissertation
Degree Name
PhD
Department
English
School
McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts
Committee Chair
Sarah Breckenridge Wright
Committee Member
Danielle A. St. Hilaire
Committee Member
Sarah Miller
Keywords
Rolle, Julian, Norwich, Crashaw, Donative, Mystical, Desire, Mimetic, Medieval, Mediator
Abstract
Mystical texts often present themselves as possessing a “donative” intent, in which the writer aims to share the significance of their own experience. This dissertation will show how a consideration of donative intent and its textual results can enrich the study of medieval and early-modern mystical writings, approaching them from the broad concept of triangular mimetic desire in conjunction with other theoretical insights in order to examine the methods through which writers seek to portray their mediator-object relationship with God and inspire reading subjects’ mimetic desire.
I will elucidate Richard Rolle’s portrayal of his mediatorial purpose and unique experiences, and how his language and stylistic choices communicate the overwhelming and displacing aspects of these events, while bringing about a reading experience that is in its own way overwhelming and displacing. Julian of Norwich, I will demonstrate, undertakes a hermeneutic of identification conflating mediator and subjects while presenting elements of divine-human identification. She portrays a positive mimetic triangle enabled by its divine object. Richard Crashaw presents a unique derivative donative intent, portraying in his Teresan poems Teresa of Avila as mediator and her mediator-object relationship. His stylistic choices serve these portrayals, providing a reading experience aesthetically analogous to Teresa’s experiences of the divine. He portrays responding subjects within the poems to suggest the response of triangular mimetic desire.
These analyses will involve a unique synthesis of elements from phenomenology, theology, historical studies, and stylistics, validating the use of hybridized approaches in elucidating the underlying intentions and representational elements of mystical texts.
Language
English
Recommended Citation
Geitgey, S. (2020). “That Those Hearing or Reading Might Strive to Imitate”: Donative Intent, Positive Triangular Mimetic Desire, and the Portrayal of the Mediator-Divine (non)Object Relationship in Richard Rolle, Julian of Norwich, and Richard Crashaw (Doctoral dissertation, Duquesne University). Retrieved from https://dsc.duq.edu/etd/1933