Cultivating the Heart, livre ebook

Cultivating the Heart examines the nurturance of feeling – especially the intertwined affective stirrings of compassion, love, and sorrow – in a range of religious texts from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. These texts encourage, stimulate, define and attempt to express the ‘cultivation of hearts’, an image inspired by Part VII of Ancrene Wisse, whereby readers and audiences of the texts nurture a range of sophisticated ‘affective literacies’. In addition to extensive analysis of English, Latin and Anglo-Norman texts, this book makes substantial reference to the affective strategies of wall paintings in parish churches, demonstrating how the affective strategies of wall paintings cannot be perceived as inferior to or irreconcilable with the affective import of textual media. IntroductionChapter 1: Upon a Spiritual Cross: Feeling in the Lambeth and Trinity HomiliesChapter 2: The Gnawed Hand: Presence and Absence of Feeling in the Early South English LegendariesChapter 3: Co-feeling: Compassion in Ancrene Wisse and the Wooing GroupChapter 4: Call Me Bitter: Feeling and Sensing in Passion LyricsConclusion