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1 - Þe Wohunge of ure Lauerde and the House Without Walls

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 June 2021

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Summary

I am a seeker

In time for that which is

Beyond time, that is everywhere

And nowhere; no more before

Than after, yet always

About to be.

I begin my paper with a quotation from R. S. Thomas, whom Vincent Gillespie once described to me as ‘the sublime poet of divine apophasis’. Of course, this is a description which applies as well to Vincent as it does to the irascible Welsh poet; his academic reflections on ‘[t]he play of absence and presence’ which characterize ‘the human experience of engagement with the ineffable’ have always teetered on the brink of the poetic. Yet, as is the case with R. S. Thomas, the apparently effortless lyricism of Vincent's writing has been hardwon, born of rigorous engagement with difficult questions.

My choice of quotation is based on Thomas's location of the object of his enquiry ‘everywhere / And nowhere’. In situating that which he seeks in a realm of impossible paradox, the poet positions himself in a theological tradition which recognizes the incapacity of language fully to capture the essential alterity of the divine. He echoes Anselm of Canterbury (who echoes Augustine of Hippo) in finding God ‘ubique et semper et nusquam et numquam’ (‘everywhere and always and never and nowhere’). In taking us back to the theological landscape of early medieval England, this recollection of Anselm is pertinent; the influence of his prayers and meditations on the anchoritic literature which is the focus of this chapter has been long recognized. Indeed, the rhetorical and theological delight that Anselm takes in the exploration of divine paradox (God as compassionate yet beyond passion; Christ as strong in his weakness, lofty in his lowliness, and powerful in his impotence) informs the English material under consideration here. A discursive mode founded on paradox and apparent antithesis is fundamental to its effective operation. The focus of this chapter is on anchoritic literature's preoccupation with the paradox of the enclosed life as fundamentally exposed, and exposing.

Anyone familiar with Ancrene Wisse and its associated literature (the texts of the so-called Katherine and Wooing Groups) will know that these writings share a preoccupation with walls, both literal and metaphorical. Most notably, the rhetoric of Ancrene Wisse emphasizes that its anchoritic readers are bound by the walls of both anchorhold and body, and it repeatedly reiterates the dangers of violating these boundaries.

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Chapter
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Medieval and Early Modern Religious Cultures
Essays Honouring Vincent Gillespie on his Sixty-Fifth Birthday
, pp. 3 - 20
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2019

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