Emotions in "Revelations of Divine Love" by Julian of Norwich

Emotions have been continually coded as feminine throughout the history of Western societies. Although there are prominent exemptions from this rule, emotions, under the name of passions or affects, were of particular significance to medieval female piety. Numerous studies have been conducted in the field of emotional history that considered various medieval theories of emotions. Paradoxically, historians of emotions have hardly explored the so-called devotional literature, that seems to be a self-evident subject for investigating the experience of emotions in the Middle Ages. This study considers one of the most prominent medieval visionaries, Julian of Norwich, who is also regarded as the first woman to ever write in English. Drawing on two versions of her “Revelations”, it seeks to reveal how emotional utterances are utilized by the author. A thesaurus of emotional terms along with explanatory model for patterns in emotions' usage in the text emerged as a result of this enquiry.