'Þese dowble wordis þat ben hard to vndirstonde': Exploring the Mutability of Medieval Devotional Language through the Theological Concept of Despair

This thesis explores the mutability of medieval devotional language by focusing on the complex and paradoxical concept of spiritual despair. It looks at how writer, translator, interpreter, and ultimate audience might bring different agendas to bear on their own readings. Part one examines a range of Latin texts in which the first chapter examines thirteenth and fourteenth-century pastoral manuals for how their stance on despair alters according to the writers' purpose, intended audience, and the creative readings of intermediaries. Chapter two considers despair from the perspective of eleventh and twelfth-century vita contemplativa monastic writing. It explores the effects language might have on an enclosed community and how authors sometimes altered their approach as a result. The second half of this thesis explores these concepts further through fourteenth-century vernacular devotional writing aimed at the spiritually interested laity. By looking at Middle English, Latin, and Modern English translations of Marguerite Porete's Mirror of Simple Souls, in comparison with Julian of Norwich's Revelations, it reflects on how language is never fixed but always full of several different, sometimes paradoxical, meanings which therefore allow for a range of devotional practices.