Subjectivity and the role of the heart in Ancrene Wisse: cognitive and

psychoanalytic perspectives.

Candidate - 603937

10,770 words

This paper will focus on the image of the heart in Ancrene Wisse, and

its bearing on discourses of subjectivity, desire, and religious

experience. A sustained analysis of the polysemic usage of the single

lexeme heorte—with its multiple signification: of centrality and

concentricity; emotion and rationality; regulation and desire;

embodiment and containment—will enable a multifaceted and

multidirectional exploration of the mappings of religious selfhood

made possible by this text.1 The word heorte is one of the most

significant and, notwithstanding pronouns and prepositions, one of

the most prolifically distributed words in Ancrene Wisse, occurring,

with its cognates, over two-hundred times; thus working its way, on a

medial average, onto virtually every folio of the text, recto and

verso.2 In its coherence of qualia determining the self-definition of

the Subject the heart can in some wise be seen as the latent zero

point field of selfhood: orchestrating a fundamental set of conditions

1 See OED s.v. ‘heart,’ n. 1.a, 2, 5.a, 5.b, 6.a, 7, 8, 9.a, 10.a, 11.a, 12, etc. for examples of its central and wide semantic availability for medieval discourse. On the relation of the discourses of selfhood and the heart to textuality itself, see Eric Jager, The Book of the Heart, (Chicago, 2000).2 See Potts, Stevenson and Wogan-Browne, Concordance to Ancrene Wisse, (Cambridge, 1993), 335-38.

that cannot by definition be removed, for the being of the Subject to

occur, much less aspire to divine knowledge.3 In tracing out the

networks and levels to which the heart belongs and subtends in

Ancrene Wisse, this paper will open the field of anchoritic subjectivity

to the domain of Psychology.4

Of all the theoretical discourses to have developed during the

twentieth century, those unfolding from the premises of

psychoanalysis are the most firmly rooted in questions of identity and

subject-formation; particularly as they are channelled through

discursive practice and semiotic process. In this paper, then, I hope

to bring two branches of psychological theory to bear upon the

emergence and permutation of selfhood in Ancrene Wisse, as it

pertains to the image of the heart; namely Continental post-

structuralist psychoanalysis—associated with Jacques Lacan, Julia

Kristeva and Slavoj Žižek—and cognitive neuroscience—which since

the development of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI),

has emerged as the sine qua non for psychological discourse in

3 ‘Qualia’ are subjective representations of the “is-ness” of things, whether sensory, phenomenological or emotional. See OED, s.v. ‘quale,’ n.2; also the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/. The zero-point field is a term used in quantum field theory to designate the lowest energy state of a field, otherwise known as the ground state or vacuum state; always non-zero. Zero point energy has effects that are measurable, furthermore ‘it is a mistake to think of any physical vacuum as some absolutely empty void’, Christopher Ray, Time, space and philosophy, (London, 1991), 205. 4 Ancrene Wisse and ancillary texts in the AB group have been the focus of much interesting work on notions of selfhood in recent years. For some of the best examples see Linda Georgianna, The Solitary Self, (Cambridge MA, 1981); Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, ‘Chaste bodies’ in Framing Medieval Bodies, (Manchester, 1993), 24-42; Christopher Cannon, ‘Form of the Self’ in MÆ, 70 (2001), 47-65 and his ‘Place of the Self’ in The Grounds of English Literature, (Oxford, 2004), 139-71. Theoretical approaches informed by psychology are surprisingly underrepresented in this field; a deficit this paper hopes to address.

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recent years.5 In methodological principle I concur with Fraser Watts

in that ‘one of the attractive things about the psychology of self [is]

that it provides a meeting point for various different strands of

psychology, social and individualistic, cognitive and psychoanalytic.’6

In view of which I will seek to co-ordinate a complementary

relationship between these broadly discrete disciplines, each of which

achieves value in significantly different ways that each relate to

different aspects of the perplexities of this text. While the analytic

discourse, which is predicated upon the operation of the unconscious,

and which teases out the intricacies of the triadic interrelationship of

the “Borromean Knot” of the imaginary-symbolic-real, is a powerful

tool for examining the manner in which religious subjectivity is

constructed and carried out. Conversely, the cognitive approach will

enable a dissection of the particularities in which the functionality of

the heart is thought to consist, in its operation subtending the very

making of religious selfhood.

The complexity of selfhood and of the human brain, as well as

the ramifications proliferating from the infinite potential of God,

suggest the merits of a multilayered analysis. Such premises would

seem intrinsically to require a holistic and complementary approach,

5 On the emergence of cognitive neuroscience see Kevin Oschner, ‘Social Cognitive Neuroscience: Historical Development, Core Principles, and Future Promise’ in Kruglanksi and Higgins (eds.). Social Psychology: A Handbook of Basic Principles (New York, 2007); on its implications for the psychology of religion see Andrew Newberg and Bruce Lee, ‘The Neuroscientific Study of Religious and Spiritual Phenomena’ in Zygon vol. 40 no.2 (June 2005), 469-89; on its implications for the study of ‘selfhood’, see Antonio Damasio, Descartes’ Error, (London, 1994) and The Feeling of What Happens, (London, 2000).6 Theology and Psychology, (Aldershot, 2002), 74. See also Drew Westen, Self and Society, (Cambridge, 1985) for a study that integrates analytic, behaviourist and cognitive theories.

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for it is via holism and complementarity in which the Subject achieves

its relationship with God. By induction the particulars of anchoritic

ontology might be seen to align and cohere into the general condition

of acceptance. If God is posited as a fundamental unity underlying

and constituting the abundant diversity of experience then it follows

that the knowledge of His or Its existence should proceed from an

integrated contemplation and harnessing of Its or His many

manifestations.7 In Ancrene Wisse the somatic combines with volition

and emotion in the rhythmicity of language to stimulate surrender to

the totality of oneness with the divine mens. The terms of this

trajectory are predicated on desire, and it is desire, in both the

theological and the psychoanalytic senses, as they are organised by

and distributed through the heart, which will guide this paper.

An essential premise for both psychoanalysis and religious

vocation is that a recuperative transvaluation of the Subject

proceeds, in the first place, from self-knowledge. Accordingly the

first section of this paper will address itself to this inward aspect,

situating Ancrene Wisse within a long tradition of writings in which

the heart is an organon of fundamental centrality: physically,

phenomenologically, and mentally.8 This builds on Christopher

Cannon’s architectonic model of concentricity, in which selfhood is

patterned by a structure of interiority that provides the form of the

7 For an eloquent account of this idea see Daniel Hardy, ‘The God Who Is With the World’ in Science Meets Faith, ed. Fraser Watts, (London, 1998), 136-53 (144-7).8 For bilateral applications of ‘organon,’ as both somatic and rational, see OED, s.v. ‘organon’, 1, 2. See also Kant, Opus postumum, trans. Förster and Rosen, (Cambridge, 1993), 21: 91-93, for whom the organon is ‘an instrument for transcendental philosophy.’

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textual object as well as determining the ontological structuration for

anchoritic enclosure in itself.9 The heart is the ontic fulcrum of this

essentially Ptolemaic structure and it is through the custodianship

and solicitation of the heart’s vital functionality that a radical

unfolding into the numinous infinite becomes possible.10 A process

thus commencing with scrupulous self-awareness culminates in a

holistic state of grace that embraces the universal generality.

The first section of this paper, then, situates Ancrene Wisse

within a long tradition of mystical literature and analyses contextual

precedent for the manner in which the heart is employed in the

primary text. It then studies a range of higher cognitive functions, as

they are mediated by the heart in the primary text, before adducing a

cognitive theory which may help to illuminate the heart in its holistic

capacity for the generation of religious subjectivity. Finally, this

section treats of the cognitive liminality in which the heart in its

relational aspect to the sensory matrix can be seen to operate. It

addresses the issues of containment and centricity and seeks to

understand the way the heart is posited as a product of a specific

anxiety. The second section then draws primarily on the

psychoanalytic theory of abjection, developed by Julia Kristeva

9 For Cannon’s model and its development see, ‘Form of the Self’ in MÆ, 70 (2001), 47-65 (51); ‘Enclosure’ in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Women’s Writing, (Cambridge, 2003), 109-23 (112-113); and his ‘Place of the Self’ in The Grounds of English Literature, (Oxford, 2004), 139-171 (153-170). On ‘structuration’ see Anthony Giddens, The Constitution of Society, (USC, 1986), whose sociological theory links up binary dichotomies between subject/object, agent/structure and the microsocial/macrosocial domains.10 On the relation of body to cosmos in the Ptolemaic universe see Michael Camille, ‘The image of the self’ in Framing Medieval Bodies, eds. Rubin and Kay, (Manchester, 1993), 62-68.

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(1980), and recasts the themes of the first section in this light. It

addresses the way in which the opposition of abjection : nourishment,

structures the ethical paradigm inscribed in Holy Writ, and is

mediated by Ancrene Wisse. It furthermore draws on various other

dimensions of Lacanian theory to demonstrate how this opposition

relates to the split nature of the Subject. The analytic process in

which the text is made to participate in this section, assumes the

significance of the heart that is developed in the first, and carries that

thesis forward as an implicit principle.

The notion that self-knowledge preconditions wisdom, and hence the

knowledge of God, was inscribed for our culture at the Temple of

Apollo at Delphi, and has reverberated throughout the Western

tradition ever since, in variations of the lemma: ΓΝΩΘΙ ΣΕΑΥΤΟΝ

(‘know thyself’).11 It is an injunction especially germane to the

principles both of psychoanalysis and mystical experience, for both

proceed from inward contemplation in the recognition of a higher

power, and lead to the transvaluation of the Subject. In the early

Platonic (or pseudo-Platonic) Alcibiades I, Socrates reasons that ‘he

who enjoins a knowledge of oneself bids us become acquainted with

the soul;’ further that ‘if the soul...is to know herself, she must surely

look at a soul, and especially at that region of it in which occurs the

virtue of a soul [ψυχήνς άρετή]—wisdom [σοφία].’ In that this part of

11 For examples from post-Athenian culture: see Juvenal Satire 11.27 (l1st/e2nd C AD); Abelard’s Ethica or Scito te ipsum (<1140); Sir John Davies’ Nosce Teipsum (1599); Pope, Essay on Man, (1734); Emerson, Gnothi seauton, (1831); The Matrix (1999).

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the soul is ‘the seat of knowledge and thought’ it ‘resembles God,

and whoever looks at this, and comes to know all that is divine, will

gain thereby the best knowledge of himself.’12 The priorities of this

trajectory would undergo reversal during the transition to the

Christian Middle Ages however, so that by the time of the medieval

mystics knowledge of self would subtend knowledge of ‘all that is

divine [θειον γνούς]’ rather than vice-versa. Thus, in the Benjamin

minor of Richard of St. Victor:

Ascendat ergo homo ad cor altum ascendat in montem istum, si vult illa

capere, si vult illa cognoscere, quae sunt supra sensum humanum.

Ascendat per semetipsum supra semetipsum.Per cognitionem sui, ad

cognitionem Dei…Montis ascension…pertinet ad cognitionem sui, ea quae

supra montem geruntur, provehunt ad cognitionem Dei13

The hierarchical priority here inscribed, demonstrates how in the

medieval period the mystical trajectory is predicated upon and

springs from a paradigm of scrupulous self-examination, and

regulation, which in turn gives place to the contemplative mode.

The Byzantine theologian, Nicetas Stethatos of Studios (d.

c1090) observes a similar trajectory in his tripartite model of

contemplation, citing

three degrees among those who are engaged on the ascent towards

perfection: purificatory, illuminatory, mystical, which is also the one

12 LCL 201: 203, 211-1313 Cap. LXXXIII, in PL 196: col0059b-0059c; cited by and translated in Zaehner, ‘Standing on the Peak’ in Studies in Mysticism and Religion (Jerusalem, 1967), 386: ‘Let a man rise up to the heart’s high place, climb up the mountain if he desire to attain and know what is above the human mind. Let him rise up by himself above himself, and from self-knowledge to the knowledge of God…The ascent of the mountain belongs to self-knowledge; [whereas] the things done upon the mountain tend to the knowledge of God.’

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making perfect; the first is of beginners, the second of those who are at

half-way, the third of those who have reached the end, perfection.14

The higher stages of this model may only follow on from a catharsis

made possible through self-examination, enabling the subject to

disabuse itself of its worldly attachments. This is a fundamental

preoccupation, and guiding principle, of Ancrene Wisse, in which the

reading Subject’s relationship with God, as described in the seventh

section, is predicated upon a pure disposition, that is, of ‘schir heorte’

(M 144). The formal, textual, expression of the trajectory from inward

to onward in Ancrene Wisse is adapted from the Cistercian, Aelred of

Rievaulx’s (d. 1167) De Institutione Inclusarum (c1160).15 The earlier

text is tripartite in structure, comprising, firstly, a Rule for the Outer

Man; secondly, a Rule for the Inner Man; and finally, a Threefold

meditation on the past, the present, and the future. The threefold

structure of the third section, thus reflects the structure in toto, as

well as the Trinitarian pattern. Its chronological sequence

furthermore enables Aelred to render the structuration between the

Christological narrative and the earthly preoccupations of the

anchoress, by observing an eschatalogical trajectory, beginning with

the incarnation and culminating in the contemplation of the Final

Judgement. As well as to move onward through time, the structure of

the threefold meditation moves inward through human experience

14 ‘Chapters about Gnōsis’, III, 41; cited by Carl Keller, ‘Mystical Literature’ in Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis, (London, 1978), 75.15 On the relation between the texts see Cannon, ‘Form of the Self’, MÆ 70 (2001), 47-65; also Gopa Roy, ‘‘Sharpen Your Mind with the Whetstone of Books’: The Female Recluse as Reader’ in Women, the Book and the Godly, eds. Smith and Taylor, (Cambridge, 1995), 113-122.

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and upward through the hierarchy of the universe. The historical

narrative of Christ’s life on earth gives place to an intimate, familial

register, in which Aelred subordinates his fallen, unchaste condition

to the virgin purity of his sister in the present. The contemplation of

the Day of Judgement, in the future, juxtaposes the abjection of

sinners with the joy and security that is the reward of the chaste. So

the anchoress is encouraged to proceed from cognition of Christ’s

exemplary life to meditation upon an ethics of chastity leading to

contemplation of the divine mens as it is unfolded at the end of time.

In soliciting the transition from cogitatio, to meditatio, to

contemplatio, Aelred forms part of a tradition of mystical literature

that flourished during the “twelfth-century renaissance.”16 The

contemplative model of Hugh of St. Victor (d. 1141), for further

example, assumes the relinquishing of the world as a precondition of

the mystic vocation; his model, also threefold, proceeds in the first

instance from an inward aspect and determines ‘[t]hree...modes of

cognition…belonging to the rational soul: cogitation, meditation,

contemplation.’17 The common thread of mystical literature is thus

an experiential arc with aetiology in the self and teleology in the

divine. The culmination of this trajectory is predominantly described

as a unitive state involving abnegation of self and absorption, or

transvaluation, into the infinite. The Dominican Neoplatonist Meister

16 On this see Charles Homer Haskins, Renaissance of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge MA, 1927).17 Nineteen Sermons on Ecclesiastes, trans. H.O. Taylor in The Library of Christian Classics, vol. XIII, ‘The Late Medieval Mystics,’ 90.

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Eckhart (d. c1328) describes this ultimate union as a moment in

which

breaking through [all limitations] I perceive what God and I are in common.

There I am what I was. There I neither increase nor decrease. For there I

am the immovable, which moves all things. Here man has won again what

he is eternally (what he is in principio) and ever shall be. Here God is

received into the soul.18

The ultimate efflorescence and end-state of the mystical trajectory,

then, is a zero sum in which the binarity of the finite self to the

infinite Other is resolved by the disclosure of the human soul to its

limitless holistic potential. The alterity of God is revealed as a

syntagmatic construct shimmering, dissolving, as the paradigmatic

truth of His immanence is laid bare. In a moment of joyous

anagnorisis the Subject delightedly embraces this mysterious Other

as that which was always already a part and parcel of her very own

being.

Ancrene Wisse enjoins with the Neoplatonist tradition in which

the soul itself is bodied forth as an archetype of the imago Dei: a

microcosmic, finite image of the infinite totality of God as

macrocosm; placing ‘monnes sawle’ as the ‘heste þing under Godd,’

and identifying ‘ure deorwurðe gast’ with ‘Godes ane furme’ (M 55).19

Thus introspection and the contemplation of the soul proceeds of

course to the contemplation of God. If the soul is that entity, or

18 Cited by Rudolph Otto in Mysticism East and West, trans. Bracey and Payne, (London, 1932), 15. Specific citation of original not given.19 EETS OS 325: 55; all further references to this edition cited as ‘M’ with page-number in text.

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aspect, in the human most divine in form and nature, then the heart

is understood as its vector, or the vessel of its life. The Wisse-author,

glossing the Scriptures, repeatedly admonishes his reader ‘wite wel

þin heorte; for sawle lif is in hire’ (M 20).20 Kallistos Ware observes

that ‘in the Old and New Testaments [there is] no head-heart

contrast,’ but rather ‘[t]he heart is the seat of memory, of the

conscience, of thought, wisdom and intelligence;’ and that the

centrality of the heart, as both somatic organ and spiritual organon,

forms a tradition in Christian literature stretching back through the

writings of the early Church Fathers.21 In the fourth-century Macarian

Homilies, for example,

the heart...directs and governs the whole bodily organism; and when grace

possesses the pasturages of the heart, it rules over all the members and

the thoughts. For there in the heart, is the intellect (nous) and all the

thoughts of the soul and its expectation; and in this way grace penetrates

throughout all parts of the body.22

This conception of the heart, as attending to the multiple networks

and levels constituting selfhood, is reflected in Ancrene Wisse, where

it also consists in a holistic capacity. It is figured as a site for the

cathexis of a range of higher human functions, and also as the

vulnerable negotiator of the perils of sensory experience. As such it

forms an essential, ineradicable, nexus for the complex of modalities

by which the perpetually self-reconstituting state of consciousness

20 Citing Proverbs 4.23: Omni custodia serua cor tuum, quia ex ipso uita procedit | [‘With all watchfulness keep thy heart, because life issueth out from it’], Vulgate and Douay-Rheims texts.21 See ‘The Soul in Greek Christianity’ in From Soul to Self, ed. M. J. C. Crabbe, (London, 1999), 56.22 Ibid, 57.

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comes about and is sustained.23 In the Proslogion, Anselm treats

divine knowledge as that which emerges from a euphonious and

synthetic co-exertion of the activities of the heart, the spirit and the

mind, from which emerges the disposition to the divine which

exceeds all human frames of reference:

si Deum sic diligent "toto corde, tota mente, tota anima" ut tamen totum

cor, tota mens, tota anima non sufficiat dignitate dilectionis: profecto sic

gaudebunt "toto corde, tota mente, tota anima", ut totum cor, tota mens,

tota anima non sufficiat plenitudini gaudii.24

Assessment of the Wisse-author’s treatment of the higher functions

of the heart—viz. volition, compunction, emotion, memory and

cognition—and their interpenetration, will help us to understand the

heart’s profound significance and centrality to the making of religious

selfhood in this text.

Throughout Ancrene Wisse subjective volition is stimulated by

and answers to the operation of the heart. In the fourth section the

reasoning faculty must work together with the volitional heart to

resist temptation: ‘wið consens of heorte, wið skiles ȝettunge’ (M

87); and yet the volitional aspect is itself fraught with danger, for

‘sone se þu eauer felest þet tin heorte wið luue falle to eani þing eawt

ouer mete, ananrihtes beo war’ (M 112). Yet significantly more

23 On this notion see Damasio, for whom consciousness emerges from interplay between bodily and brain function, and is ‘constructed anew, moment by moment,’ in Descartes’ Error, 158; and also his Feeling of What Happens, 217, 224.24 ‘if they love God their whole heart, mind and soul, while as yet their whole heart, mind and soul is not equal to the dignity of that love, truly they will rejoice with their whole heart, and mind, and soul, so that their whole heart, mind, and soul will not suffice for the fullness of their joy’, trans. Sister Benedicta Ward, Prayers and Meditations, (London, 1973; 1979), 265.

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perilous than volitional misapplication is its lack altogether in an

apathetic heart, as exemplified by the bear cubs of Sloth:

Torpor is þe forme: þet is, wlech heorte (vnlust to eni þing) þe schulde

leitin al o lei i luue of ure Lauerd. Þe oþer is Pusillanimitas: þet is to poure

heorte ant to earh...Þe þridde is Cordis Grauitas. Þis haueð hwa-se

wurcheð god, and deð hit tah mid a dead ant mid an heui heorte...Þe fifte

is Heorte Grucchunge. (M 77)

A powerful sense of volition is the basic criterion of anchoritic self-

definition. The paradigm of Ancrene Wisse is to guide the anchoress

in shaping the mode of her volitional agency, so that she inclines in

her heart, to the spiritual domain, ‘ant beon in heorte gasteliche

ihehet toward heouene’ (M 60). Through the exegesis of the

treasure-hunter, the anchoritic vocation is construed as a laborious

struggle toward the riches of heaven, with the volitional engagement

in this endeavour structured around the hierarchical trajectory of

ascent:

þe delueð efter golt-hord, eauer se he mare nahheð hit, se his heortes

gleadschipe makeð him mare lusti ant mare fersch to diggin, ant deluen

deoppre ant deoprre aðet he hit finde. | Ower [hord] nis nawt on eorðe;

for-þi ne þurue ȝe nawt deluen dunewardes, ah heouen uppart þe heorte.

For þet is þe uprowunge aȝein þis worldes stream—[þa þa heorte walde

lihten lihtliche adun mid te stream]...Þis is þe deluunge: beon bisiliche ant

ȝeornfulliche eauer her-abuten, wið anewil ȝirnunge, wið heate of hungri

heorte.25 (M 43-4)

25 Deriving from Job 3.21-2: qui expectant mortem et non venit quasi effodientes thesaurum | gaudentque vehementer cum invenerint sepulchrum; [‘That look for death, and it cometh not, as they that dig for a treasure: | And they rejoice exceedingly when they have found the grave?’], Vulgate and Douay Rheims texts.

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Correlative to this sense of volition manifested as the desire of a

hungry heart subserving the religious vocation, the anchoress is later

exhorted to take guidance from the examples of pilgrims and holy

men who ‘þah ha beon i worltlich wei...ah habbeð hare heorte eauer

toward heouene’ (M 132). The volitional heart is thus figured an

aspectual property guiding the self, as well as an entity in which

selfhood coheres, and in which the abstract is concretised. Even

should the anchoress falter in this path, the heart itself becomes the

directive for and catalyst to confession, in which absolution is wholly

predicated upon a moment of genuine volition: þet tu segge to þe

presot, ‘Ich habbe studefestliche i þonc in heorte þis sunne to forleten

ant do penitence’ (M 129). Primarily, in his framing of volition as a

capacious determination of the heart, the author stimulates

autonomous engagement with the anchoritic vocation. Thus the

reader is exhorted, in the first section on prayers and meditations,

‘[e]uchan segge ase best bereð hire on heorte’ (M 18), implying that

the fervour of her inclination determines the co-extensive limits of

devotional reciprocity.

The acid test of anchoritic volition is codified in the doctrine of

imitatio Christi. The Christological narrative provides the ultimate

example of constancy of heart throughout the harrowing sacrificial

ordeal: ‘se eauer þe lust beo, se hit meadluker is, wrinnið aȝein

festluker, ant wiðseggeð þe grant þrof anewile heorte...Þeo þe þus

doð beoð Iesu Cristes feolahes, for ha doð as he dude honginde o

rode’ (M 90). The discourse of imitatio was profoundly influenced by

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Anselmian theology and especially its preoccupation with the

ontological paradoxes of the Incarnation and the Trinity, with

Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo (1097) looming large among Ancrene

Wisse’s twelfth-century contexts. In the Homo,

Anselm treats of the “historical fact” of the Incarnation, and not of the

“metaphysical reality” [implying]...that the line between metaphysics and

history is to be drawn somewhere in the area between matters...to

do...with the Trinity as a whole, and matters involving Christ’s coming to

earth as a man at some specific time in the past26

With inductive rigour, then, concrete Christological detail provides a

launching point for contemplation of the immanent metaphysical

reality to which it is always already referred. For Elizabeth

Robertson, the Homo ‘is a seminal work in the development of

attitudes toward the physical, because, in its celebration of the

humanity of Christ, it newly legitimizes all human experience.’27 In

this way, Anselm contributed to a wider movement that was shifting

away from rational, abstract conceptions of God, mediated through a

communal and organic program of pastoral care to discourses

centred on Christ as a manifestation of divine grace in human form

and a more sentimental, individual and personal model of

contemplation. This issued in a range of religious practices we now

group under the umbrella term ‘affectivity’ or ‘the affective

movement.’28

26 G. R. Evans, citing R.W. Southern in Anselm and Talking About God, (Oxford, 1978), 135.27 Early English Devotional Prose, (Knoxville, 1990), 184. 28 See Nicholas Watson, ‘Middle English Mystics,’ CHMEL, 539-65 (545); also Mark Amsler, ‘Affective Literacy: Gestures of Reading in the Later Middle Ages’ in Essays in Medieval Studies, 18 (2001), 83-110.

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The paradigm of compunction which is at the heart of the

affective movement in general and which is so central to the ascetic

doctrine of the AB-group in particular, was the fundamental

expression of this cultural shift. The emphasis on introspection and

self-scrutiny was channelled toward harnessing emotion, with the

effect that compunction (the pricking of one’s conscience) would lead

to penitence through a sympathetic identification with Christ’s

Passion. Compunction stimulated by the contemplation of Christ’s

suffering thus conditions the anchoritic identity in terms of a humble

and meek heart: ‘twa eadi þeawes...ȝeorne þe limpeð ariht to ancre:

þolemodnesse i þe earre half, i þe leatere eadmodnesse of milde and

meoke heorte. For þolemod is þe þuldeliche abereð woh þet me him

deð’ (M 61).29 To privilege humility in this manner is to undergird the

foundations of a theory of abomination and abjection that has a

totalising, and internalised, effect upon the identity and ontology of

its participants.30 Returning later to this structure of abomination as

an expression of “extimacy” I wish for the moment briefly to mark its

significance to the discourse of compunction, particularly as it is

worked through in the cathartic Passion imagery:31

29 There is a morphosyntactic tautology here, in that the dispositions ‘þolemodnesse’ and ‘eadmodnesse’ always already have their seat in the heart. The stem noun ‘mod’ means ‘heart’ as well as ‘mind’, ‘thought’, ‘feeling’ and ‘will,’ among other things, in OE, ODu, OS, and OHG, and has a modern cognate in ‘mood’. See the many OE cognates and derivations in Bosworth and Toller, 695; also OED s.v. ‘mood’ n1.30 See Kristeva, Powers of Horror, 90-132. I will return to this in some detail.31 “extimacy” Anglicises a neologism coined by Lacan, extimité, which problematises binary opposition between “inside” and “outside” for psychoanalytic theory. Its topological structure is defined by the figures of the Moebius strip and the Torus.

16

Þench hwuch pine he þolede on his flesch wiðuten, hu swote he wes

iheortet, hu softe wiðinnen, ant þu schalt driuen ut euch atter of þin heorte

ant bitternesse of þi bodi. For i þulli þoht, ne beo hit be eauer se bitter,

pine þet tu þolie for þe luue of him þe droh mare for þe schal þunche þe

swote. (M 54)

The logic of sacrifice informs the paradoxical imperative that value

may only be achieved through its very exhaustion or negation: ‘Þis

beoð þeo þe neauer ne beoð gleade iheortet bute hwen ha þolieð

sum wa oðer sum scheome wið Iesu on his rode; for þis is þe selhðe

on eorðe, hwa-se mei for Godes luue habben scheome ant teone’ (M

134). The heart is thus repeatedly figured as both the focus and the

object of compunction; it is where compunction happens, and in

achieving the transvaluation of the heart, from bitterness into

sweetness, compunction in turn has its effect.

The centrality of the heart to the discourse of compunction, and

affective literature in general, is coherent, to be sure, with its

perceived rôle as the seat of emotion; a rôle that would eventually

insist itself, beyond all others here outlined, upon the modern

psyche.32 The Wisse-author sustains an intense emotional register

that intertwines the tragic glamour of the passion with the libidinal

charge of romance, spurring the heart to its mystical objective in the

knowledge of God.33 At the cognitive level it has recently been

suggested that ‘heightened emotionality in a context of surrender

32 Examples are virtually limitless. Its use in the adornment of ‘I ♥ NY’ T-shirts, in their extravagant superfluity perhaps exemplifies the ubiquity of this image and its rôle for modern consciousness.33 On the relation of Ancrene Wisse to romance, see Cannon, ‘Form of the Self.’

17

increases the possibility of self-transformation.’34 In her supplication

to God, the anchoress is exhorted to ‘gred luddre wið hat heorte’ (M

110), and also to ‘ȝeoueð Godd ower heorte i softnesse, i swetnesse,

in alles cunnes meoknesse, ant softest eadmodnesse’ (M 44).

Through the allegory of the birds, she is set up in the expectation of

delight and mirth that is the reward of a life of good works: ‘ant

sitteð o þis grene singinde murie (þet is, resteð ham i þulli þoht ant,

ase þeo singeð, habbeð murhðe oh heorte)’ (M 53).35 Yet the

characteristic arborescence which structures the rhetoric of Ancrene

Wisse means that the text is perpetually alert also to the negative

potential of emotionality; of the threat posed by unregulated passion

to the cultivation of αγάπη (agapē).

Just as divine grace is figured, in the first sequences of the

text, as a healing corrective that smoothes and soothes the heart—Þe

riwleð þe heorte, ant makeð efne ant smuðe wiðute cnost and dolc of

woh inwit ant of wreiȝende’ (M 1)—so, conversely, anger and hatred

are construed as disfiguring physical pathogens, hideous and

abhorrent to the omniscient mind of God: ‘þet is, heatunge oðer

great heorte...Þe bret hit in breoste, al is attri to Godd þet he eauer

wurcheð’ (M 76). So much so in fact that the Subject is desacralized,

and effectively excommunicated, during the experience of these

negative emotional states:

34 Eugene d’Aquili and Andrew Newberg, ‘The Neuropsychology of Religion’ in Science Meets Faith, ed. Watts, (1998), 90.35 The image of the delighted heart abounds in the vivid ecphrastic texts of the ‘Wooing Group;’ for example, see EETS OS 241: 1, 5, 15, 17, 20, 21, 37.

18

Ȝef þe feond bitweonen ow toblaweð eani wreaððe oþer great heorte—þet

Iesu Crist forbeode!—ear ha beo iset wel, nawt ane to neomen Godes

flesch ant his blod ne wurðe nan se witles, ah ȝet (þet is leasse) þet ha

eanes ne bihalde þer-on, ne loki i ful wreaððe toward him þe lihte to mon

in eorðe of heouene (M 98)

Anger and hatred, then, not only obstruct progress on the mystical

trajectory, thus obviating the possibility of divine union, they are

actively retrogressive and destructive to the anchoritic ontology,

causing the Subject to backslide through the animal continuum:

‘Wreaððe...hwil hit least, ablindeð swa þe heorte þet ha ne mei soð

icnawen.’....Hwil þet eauer wreaððe is i wummone heorte, versaili, segge |

hire Vres, Auez, Pater Nostres, ne deð ha bute þeoteð. Naueð ha bute, as

þeo þet is iwent to wuluene i Godes ehnen, wuluene steuene in his lihte

earen. (M 48-9)

Ancrene Wisse’s regulatory paradigm is always thus alert to

emotional liminality—is cautiously aware that its reading Subject is a

borderline case—and so to the precariousness of that heightened

emotional state from which mystical union must in all cases spring,

as ever-threatening to tip the balance into passionate deregulation.

In its multilayered orchestration, then, of the higher functions

of human agency—volition, compunction and emotion in particular—

the heart is employed in a holistic capacity, negotiating the complex

multiplicity from which consciousness, in its excessive totality,

emerges. In this, Ancrene Wisse would seem to anticipate the

findings of a recent generation of theoreticians of consciousness, who

have discovered in the empirical data made available from studies in

19

cognitive neuroscience, that ‘the self,’ which emerges to ‘endow our

experience with subjectivity’ is a complex co-product of ‘numerous

brain systems’ with ‘numerous body-proper systems.’36 Despite its

author’s conventional assertion of mind-body dualism, then, in that

‘Þu art of twa dalen, of licome ant of sawle’ (M 105), the text en

masse demonstrates a subtle sensitivity to the manifold

interconnectedness of the levels of experience, which would seem to

tangle the line across which this opposition is staked. As Fraser

Watts observes, ‘[r]eligion is clearly a high-level aspect of human

functioning that involves a broad array of cognitive processes.’ 37

Recent research suggests that the mystical state of ‘Absolute Unitary

Being’—the ultimate fulfilment and fruition of the contemplative life—

emerges when ‘the sympathetic-ergotropic system [is driven] to

maximal capacity with intermittent spillover and simultaneous

activation of the parasympathetic-trophotropic system,’ resulting in a

‘progressive activation of certain parts of the non-dominant parieto-

occipetal region of the brain...creating an increasing sense of

wholeness progressively more and more dominant over the sense of

multiplicity of baseline reality.’38 The sympathetic and

parasympathetic nervous systems may usefully be characterised,

respectively, in terms of ‘flight or flight’, and ‘rest and digest’

responses and this brings out the peculiar synergism described by

Newberg and d’Aquili’s observations. This in turn helps to illuminate

36 Damasio, Descartes’ Error, 227.37 Theology and Psychology, 84.38 Newberg and d’Aquili, ‘The Neuropsychology of Religion’ in Science Meets Faith, (London, 1998), 83.

20

the oft-iterated paradoxicality of the mystic state, in which fervid

intensity manifests itself in coherence with tranquil repose, as the

multiple becomes one, and the self is assimilated to the Other.39

The privileged situation, and operation, of the heart in Ancrene

Wisse—as bestriding the somatic and cognitive domains,

administering equally to the thrill of the visceral, the clarity of intent,

and the ebullience of feeling—is thus revealed as the critical node

through which the transformative mystical process is cathected. The

heart is repeatedly described in totalistic terms. For example, as

when the reading Subject is exhorted, ‘hwa-se haueð þeos eahte

þing: ofte in hire heorte, ha wule schaken of hire slep of uule slawðe’

(M 57). The eight-part catalogue referred to here, although

summarily dispatched, describes the anchoritic ontology in its

complete relation to Christian eschatology and enjoins the heart to

comprehensive cognitive agency—ratiocinative, mnemonic, volitional,

and emotive.40 The heart, then, functions like a membrane between

introspective contemplation and the outward exegetical aspect. It

may be of value here to consider ‘heorte’ in a psychoanalytic

capacity as standing for the concept, coined by Kristeva, of the thetic

membrane: the thetic is the nexus between the semiotic (for

Kristeva this means the unregulated drives, consisting in the extra- or

39 Cf. Gregory of Nyssa, On the soul PG 46.29ab; Macarius, Spiritual homilies, II, 7. 8.; Augustine, Confessions, IV.15; Anselm, Proslogion, §25.40 ‘(i) þis scheorte lif; (ii) þis stronge wei; (iii) vre god, þet is sunne; (iiii) vre sunnen, þe beoð se monie; (v) deað, þet we beoð siker of, ant unsiker hwenne; (vi) þet sterke dom of Domesdei, ant se nearow mid alle, þet euch idel word bið þer ibroht forð, ant idele þohtes þe neren ear her ibette....(vii)...þe sorhe of helle. Þer bihald þreo þing: þe untaleliche pinen, þe echnesse of euchan, þe unimete bitternesse. (viii)...hu muchel is þe mede i þe blisse of heouene, world buten ende’ (M 57).

21

pre-linguistic domain) and the symbolic (the signifying architecture of

language-as-social construct qua the Law of the Father). If we map

the drives (pulsions) onto the non-linguistic processes implicit in

emotion, compunction, volition etc., and accept that the Symbolic, as

it conditions anchoritic subjectivity, derives its authority from the

Scriptures, then the heart in this instance can be seen to operate

precisely in this capacity as thetic.41 The heart, furthermore, has a

unitive dimension that exerts a centripetal effect upon the

extrasubjective (or intersubjective) domain of the social. It becomes

not only a source of spiritual strength in the individual—‘[n]eomeð

nu...hu god is anrednesse of luue ant annesse of heorte’ (M 95)—but

also as a cohesive force for the burgeoning anchoritic subculture at

large: ‘þet ȝe beon aa wið annesse of an heorte ant of a wil ilimet

togederes’ (M 96). The holistic multiplicity subtending, and

proliferating from, the heart thus enshrines it with ultimate value and

it therefore assumes preciousness as a vessel to be jealously

protected: ‘[h]aldeð ow feaste inne—nawt te bod ane, for þet is þe

unwurðest, ah ower fif wittes, ant te heorte ouer al ant al þer þe

sawle lif is’ (M 67). This concentric sequence—from the fleshly body,

via the penetrations of the senses, to the heart as the vessel of the

soul—articulates the contours of enclosure and defines the limits in

which the activity of selfhood is carried out.

41 See Kristeva, La révolution du langage poétique (Paris, 1974). I have worked from Margaret Waller’s translation, Revolution in Poetic Language, (New York, 1984); for the thetic, specifically, see 43-5, 48.

22

The process of defining and reinforcing these limits is

repeatedly described in Ancrene Wisse in terms of conflict and

struggle; the sensory matrix forming a bulwark against the

temptations of the world. The author devotes the entire second

section, ‘of þe heorte warde þurh þe fif wittes’ (M 20), to the

negotiation of this differential. The senses (‘wittes’) are enjoined in a

protective capacity, ‘þe beoð se wardein[s] wiðuten of þe heorte, þet

sawle lif is inne’ (M 47), guarding the enclosure of the body, as the

domain of the heart, from the iniquities of worldly experience: ‘Omni

custodia custodi cor tuum …mine leoue sustren, witeð ower heorte.

Þe heorte is wel iloket ȝef muð ant ehe ant eare wisliche beon

ilokene’ (M 41).42 The heart is thus figured as a sort of treasure-

hoard, locked in a castle keep and guarded over by the senses qua

wardens.43 The elaborate symbolic structures (and ideological

superstructures) of feudalism are implicit in the tropes of

custodianship and service through which the regulation of the heart is

formulated. In the preface, the text presents itself ‘al nis bute þuften

to serui þe leafdi to riwlin þe heorte’ (M 5). This obeisant deferral to

feudal authority describes a hierarchical structure in which the

service and rule of the heart is tiered between the paradigmatic rule

(the Lady qua caritas qua inner rule) and its syntagmatic expression

in the rituals of devotion (the handmaiden qua praxis qua outer rule):

‘for al þet me eauer deð of þe oðer wiðuten nis bute forte riwlin þe

42 Proverbs 4.23, ‘With all watchfulness keep thy heart,’ (Douay text), describes the guiding principle of the text here.43 For an extended analysis of the castle allegory, see Cannon, ‘Place of the Self’, 150-67.

23

heorte wiðinnen’ (M 2). The priority thus inscribed in the feudal

allegory structures a differential predicated upon the mutual

obligations of service and protection. Moreover, just as the outer rule

serves the inner rule, so the Subject administers through the nature

and direction of her very ontological presence to the needs of her

innermost spiritual life, ‘þet is, alle mahen ant ahen halden a riwle

onont purte of heorte, þet is cleane ant schir inwit’ (M 2). For the

heart to subserve the contemplative trajectory of the anchoritic

Subject, it must be governed by her protective custodianship. In

Ancrene Wisse this proceeds in the first instance from the scrupulous

regulation of the senses: ‘ȝe schulen þurh ower fif wittes witen ower

heorte, þet ordre ant religiun ant sawle lif is inne’ (M 4).

An intriguing convolution in the relationship between the inner

heart and the conduits of the senses, however, turns on the

ascription of sensory agency to the heart itself. It is imbued with

sight and thus assumes an autonomous capacity for vigilance, as well

as insight, which is potentially imperilled by the possibility of neglect

‘ablinde þe heorte, ho is eað to ouercumen’ (M 24). This recurs in the

section on confession where sin is allegorised as a scrim of dust that

blinds the heart and so must be cleansed with purgative tears, ‘ne

schulen ha nawt þenne ablende þe heorte ehnen’ (M 119). The

ultimate object of anchoritic regulation is the cultivation of the ‘riht

ehe of god heorte’ (M 81), so that the Subject may look upon God,

and ‘habbe briht sihðe wið þine heorte ehnen. Bihald inward, þer Ich

am, ant ne sech þu me nawt wiðute þin heorte’ (M 36). Thus the

24

inner vision is privileged over sight trained on the objects of the

subcelestial world, the referents of which are construed as sensory

white noise, spiritual interference:

[n]urð ne kimeð in heorte bute of sum þing þet me haueð oðer isehen oðer

iherd, ismaht oðer ismeallet, ant utewið ifelet. Ant þet witeð to soðe, þet

eauer se þes wittes beoð ma|re isprengende utward, se ha leasse wendeð

inward. Eauer se recluse toteð mare utward, se ha haueð leasse leome of

ure Lauerd inward, ant alswa of þe oðre. (M 36-7)

The opposition between divine grace and spiritual abjection is

furthermore determined in polyesthetic terms, not only visual but

also olfactory—as when ‘þet fule breað…þet is, of leccherie—stinkeð

swiðe feor…þet Ich am sumdel ofdred leste hit leape sumchearre into

ower heortes nease’ (M 83)—and gustatory—as in the sustained

opposition of sweetness to bitterness (M passim).

The imperative of custodianship over the heart seeks to

regulate a dynamic which discloses anxiety about the porosity of the

liminal and the vulnerability of the heart amid the filth and tumult of

the mundane, fleshly, world—the author urging the Subject, ‘þe

leaste þet ȝe eauer mahen luuieð ower þurles’ (M 20). And yet, in its

tortuous description of the heart’s interaction with the senses—being

both passive and active, and in both voices as of inward and of

outward aspect—the text affirms and yet simultaneously destabilises

the limits of interiority itself. It may be useful to conceptualise these

complexities in terms of their “extimacy.” The Lacanian notion of

extimité ‘blurs [the line between interiority and exteriority pointing]

25

neither to the interior nor to the exterior, but is located…where the

most intimate interiority coincides with the exterior and becomes

threatening, provoking horror and anxiety.’44 The author of Ancrene

Wisse is acutely aware that physical enclosure, whether that of the

heart within the limen of the skin, or that of the Subject within the

anchorhold walls, is an insufficient regulatory limit of itself, and that

the Real of the spiritual life is fraught with the potential for

catastrophic abstraction—‘ȝef ha entremeateð hire of þinges wiðuten

mare þen ha þurfte, ant hire heorte beo utewið, þah a clot of eorðe,

þet is, hire licome, be inwið þe fowr wahes, ha is iwend wið Semei ut

of Ierusalem’ (M 66). In this sense the Real is as much inwardly as

externally determined. On the other hand, the nature of anchoritic

subjectivity is itself not a hermetically-sealed ontic state, but an

aspectual, processual development of being which unfolds within an

intersubjective structure: posited by and emerging from the doctrinal

matrix.45

I wish now to recast several of these dimensions in light of the

psychoanalytic theory of abjection as developed by Julia Kristeva in

Pouvoirs de l’horreur (1980), making special reference to its fourth

and fifth chapters, which respectively address ‘The Semiotics of

Biblical Abomination’ and the doctrine of original sin codified in the

44 Mladen Dolar, ‘Lacan and the Uncanny’, in October 58 (1991), 5-23 (6).45 On the social ramifications of the self, as a product of its relation to others see Cannon, ‘Place of the Self’, (2004), 164-69; my point, after Lacan, is that the self is always already constructed in an intersubjective relation to the Christian Law: the zero-point field is not a vacuum.

26

proverb [Agnus Dei...]‘...Qui Tollis Peccata Mundi’.46 Kristeva begins

by powerfully evoking the peculiarly visceral reflex in which abjection

has its operation, describing the horror evoked in the confrontation of

that which is ‘improper/unclean:’

Loathing an item of food, a piece of filth, waste or dung. The spasms and

vomiting that protect me. The repugnance, the retching that thrusts me to

the side and turns me away from defilement, sewage, and muck. The

shame of compromise, of being in the middle of treachery. The fascinated

start that leads me to toward and separates me from them. (K 2)

The principal relation that structures this dynamic is the binary, ‘I/Not

I.’ The abject, then, consists in all that is noxious, excessive, injurious

to the Subject, all that cannot be contained and so must be excreted,

vomited, projected: ‘”I” do not assimilate it, “I” expel it’ (K 3).

Kristeva notes that ‘[f]ood loathing is perhaps the most elementary

and most archaic form of abjection’ (K 2), and later draws the

opposition between the abject and that which nourishes, that which

we do assimilate, that which we ingest (K 108).

Ancrene Wisse’s regulatory structure is founded upon precisely

this opposition between abjection and nourishment. Duplicitous

language is figured as a type of vomit, originating in a bitter heart:

the backbiter ‘seið uuel bi anoþer, ant speoweð ut his atter se muchel

se him eauer to muð kimeð, ant culcheð al ut somet þet te attri

heorte sent up to þe tunge’ (M 35). By contrast the purgative effect

of confession is given literal expression in the conceit in which guilt

46 All references to the English translation by Leon Roudiez, Powers of Horror, (New York, 1982); cited as ‘K’ with page-numbers in parenthesis in text.

27

arising from past sin must also be vomited up: ‘[c]ulche hit i schrift

ut utterliche as ha hit dude þe feleð hire schuldi, oðer ha is idemet

þurh þet fule brune cwench to þet eche brune brune of helle’ (M 79).

Indeed, the intensity of the feeling of abjection cultivated by the text

summons a violent ejective (abjective) response in the anchoress,

appropriate to the intolerability of her shame:

ah to hire anhe schrift-feader, oðer to sum lif-hali mon ȝef ha mei him

habben, culle al þe pot ut: þer speowe ut al þet wunder þer wið fule

wordes þet fulðe efter þet hit is tuki al to wundre, swa þet ha drede þet ha

hurte his earen þet hecneð hire sunnen. (M 130)

Further levels of sinful discourse are figured as the abject products of

bodily waste, with flatterers and slanderers portrayed in excremental

terms:

[h]a beoð þe doefles gong-men, ant beoð aa in his gong-hus. Þe fikeleres

meoster is to hulie þe gong-þurl; þet he deð as ofte as he wið | his

fikelunge ant wið his preisunge wrið mon his sunne, þet stinkeð na þing

fulre; ant he hit huleð ant lideð swa þet he hit nawt ne stinkeð. Þe

bacbitere unlideð hit ant openeð swa þet fulðe þet hit stinkeð...þulliche

men stinkeð of hare stinkinde meoster, ant bringeð euch stude o stench

þet ha to nahið. Vre Lauerd schilde þet te breað of hare stinkinde þrote ne

nahi ow neauer. Oþer spechen fuleð, ah þeose attrið baðe þe earen ant te

heorte. (M 34)

Later, in the burlesque of the devil’s court, the personification of

lechery is portrayed as a fæcal incontinent, exploited by the

coprophilic devil who delights in the stench of shit:

28

[þ]e lecchur i þe deofles curt bifuleð him seoluen fulliche, ant his

feolahes alle; stinkeð of þet fulðe, ant paieð wel his lauerd wið þet

stinkinde breað betere þen he schulde wið eani swote rechles....Of alle

oþre, þenne, habbeð þeos þe fuleste meoster i þe feondes curt, þe swa

bidoð ham seoluen; ant he schal bidon ham, pinen ham wið eche stench i

þe put of helle. (M 82)

The limits of the sinful, as all that is abject from the doctrine of Holy

Writ, thus simultaneously describe the limits of bodily abjection. All

that is foul and stinking, and thus all which is excreted or thrown up

and vomited out of the body is structured as an analogue to the

transgression of the Christian ethic.

By contrast, all that coheres with—and leads to obedience to

—the paradigm of Holy Writ is portrayed as savoury, nourishing and

sweet to the heart:

[h]ope is a swete spice inwið þe heorte, þet sweteð al þet bitter þet te

bodi drinkeð....Hope halt te heorte hal, hwet-se þe flesch drehe; as me

seið, ‘Ȝef hope nere, heorte tobreke.’....For-þi, as ȝe wulleð halden inwið

ow hope, ant te swete breað of hire þe ȝeueð sawle mihte, wið muð

itunet cheoweð hire inwið ower heorte. Ne blawe ȝe hire nawt ut wið

meaðlinde muðes, wið ȝeoninde tuteles.

(M 32-3)

Nourishing hope is thus to be ingested and retained, chewed over,

digested, assimilated through the person, medicating the heart and

empowering the soul. In contrast to the foul bitterness of lecherous

desire, the grace of divine love is described as superlative

29

sweetness, but its availability is strictly delimited to those who are

obedient, monogamous, to the Christian Law:

þe schulest i þin heorte bur biseche me cosses, as mi leofmon et seið to

me i þet luue boc, Osculetur me osculo oris sui; þet is, ‘Cusse me mi

leofmon wið þe coss of his muð, muðene swetest.’ Þis coss, leoue sustren,

is a swetnesse ant a delit of heorte swa unimete swete þet euch worldes

sauur is bitter þer-toȝeines. Ah ure Lauerd wid þis coss ne cusseð na

sawle luueð ei ng buten him.

(M 41)

In addition to hope and caritas, wisdom is also allegorised as having a

nourishing and savoury potential. Furthermore, it is not only opposed

to the abject, but acts as a preservative against abjection:

Salt bitacneð wisdom, for salt ȝeueð mete smech, ant wisdom ȝeueð sauur

al þet we wel wurcheð. Wiðute salt of wisdom, | þuncheð Godd smechles

alle ure deden. On oþer half, wiðute salt flesch gedereð wurmes, stinkeð

swiðe fule ant forroteð sone. Alswa wiðute wisdom flesch as wurm forfret

hire ant wasteð hire seoluen, forfeareð as þing þe forroteð, ant sleað hire

on ende. (M 55)

The pleasant, admissible, ingestible dimension of the nourishing

provides the ultimate characterisation of a pure and charitable heart,

so that in the exegesis of the three Marys, the attainment of grace is

exemplified by a transesthetic shift, which mirrors the logic of

compunction in its alchemical transmutation of bitterness into

sweetness:

efter bitternesse kimeð swetnesse. Bitternesse buð hit; for, as þet Godspel

teleð, þeose þreo Maries bohten swote smeallinde aromaz to smirien ure

30

Lauerd. Þurh aromaz þe beoð swote is understonden swotnesse of deuot

heorte. Þeos Maries hit buggeð; þet is, þurh bitternesse me kimeð to

swotnesse. (M 67)

The differential of the abject and the nourishing thus predicates, and

is itself inscribed by, the ethical paradigm of Holy Writ which

mediates its very contours of obligation through the most primal

drives, of desire and disgust.

As the horror of the abject is repeatedly opposed to the solace

of grace, the relation of the two betrays a profound anxiety that ab-

jection, of all that is proscribed by the Law of Holy Writ (to wit,

principally, the sin of lechery), can never fully be achieved. The

anxiety is well-founded, for the codification of the abject in this text

functions precisely to articulate and perpetuate its existence in the

Symbolic: ‘[t]o the extent that the Temple is the Law, one is biblically

pure or impure only with respect to social order’ (K 91). The Subject

constituted by this Symbolic architecture is always already

conditioned by the abject and divided against her self:

[d]uring that course in which “I” become, I give birth to myself amid the

violence of sobs, of vomit. Mute protest of the symptom, shattering

violence of a convulsion that, to be sure, is inscribed in a symbolic system,

but in which, without either wanting or being able to become integrated in

order to answer to it, it reacts, it abreacts. It abjects. (K 3)

Ancrene Wisse’s defrayal of the discourse of violent struggle must

thus be considered in light of this split nature in the Subject. In this

text the conflict between the will-to-jouissance or ‘enjoyment’ in

31

fulfilling the libidinal drives and the normative “Purity” codified in

Holy Writ is specifically stretched across the battleground of the

heart. Thus ‘werreð Lecherie, þe stinkinde hore, vpon þe lauedi

Chastete, þet is Godes spuse. Earest scheot þe arewen of þe licht

echnen, þe fleoð lichtliche | forð ase flaa þet is iuiðered ant stikeð

iðere heorte’ (M 24).47 This once more turns, then, on the ex-timate

predicament: for the reality of selfhood is constructed

intersubjectively: the Subject only comes into being, as such, upon

her entry into the Symbolic order, by which she is always already

conditioned, and as a result of which she is always already split,

alienated from her self:48

[a]n essential trait of those evangelical attitudes or narratives is that

abjection is no longer exterior. It is permanent and comes from within.

Threatening, it is not cut off but is reabsorbed into speech. Unacceptable,

it endures through the subjection to God of a speaking being who is innerly

divided and, precisely through speech, does not cease purging himself of it

(K 113).

The libidinal drive is constructed as ‘traisun inwið þe gale heorte’ (M

26), an infraction of the Law codified by Holy Writ. In terms of her

abjection from the normative, the Subject is thus perpetually a

threat: defiling and defiled. Kristeva, referring to Mary Douglas,

47 On the prevalence of martial tropes in Ancrene Wisse, see Cannon, ‘Place of the Self’, 147-8.48 On subject-formation and the ‘Mirror-Stage’, see Lacan, who describes how the ‘jubilant assumption of his specular image by the child at the infans stage...would seem to exhibit in an exemplary situation the symbolic matrix in which the I is precipitated in a primordial form, before it is objectified in the dialectic of identification with the other, and before language restores it, in the universal, its function as subject’ in Écrits, trans. Alan Sheridan, (New York, 1977), 1-7, (2).

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notes, ‘filth is not a quality in itself, but it applies only to what relates

to a boundary and more particularly, represents the object jettisoned

out of that boundary, its other side, a margin’ (K 69). The Wisse-

author, who repeatedly demonstrates an obsessive preoccupation

with the liminal—in its formal, ontological, and psychological

manifestations—is unsurprisingly highly sensitive to the liminal

dimension in which the projection of ‘filth’ qua ‘the abject’ is carried

out.

The lecherous impulse is described as an invasive, puncturing,

violation: ‘þe feond þurhsticheð þe schere hwen delit of leccherie

þurleð þe heorte’ (M 103), moreover temptation itself, as a discursive

practice, is similarly framed as a type of invasive language:

[h]wen þe alde unwine sið slepi ure skile, he draheð him anan toward hire

ant feleð [enters] wið hire i speche....Ant spekeð þus þe alde sweoke

toward hire heorte wordes þet ha ȝare fulliche iseide, oðer sihðe þet ha

seh, oðer hire ahne fulðen þet ha sumhwile wrahte. Al þis he put forð

biuore þe heorte ehnen forte bifulen hire wið þoht of alse sunnen’ (M

104)

The incursion of the sinful impulse leaves a wound which remains

vulnerable to infection. It persists as a negative space, wherein the

memory of sin can be reactivated:

‘Weilawei! Mine wunden, þe weren feire ihealet, gederið neowe wursum,

ant foð on eft to rotien.’ Ihealet wunde þenne biginneð to rotien hwen

sunne þe wes ibet kimeð eft wið | licunge into munegunge, ant sleað þe

unwarre sawle. (M 104)

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Sinful violation is thus figured as a suppurating gash (a wound, a

breach, an orifice, a void) in the protective limit of the body;

simultaneously admitting of penetration while issuing in pus as a

symbolic excretion of guilt. This powerful trope secures its horrific

purchase by referring a trope of bodily emission (guilt) stimulated to

heal the rupture (wound/violation) caused by a hostile foreign body

(sin); the inertia of its rank abjectness thus consists in its very

disclosure of bodily violation, that points both to the inward and

external limits of selfhood, from a locus on the very cusp between

them.

For Kristeva the Symbolic of Judeo-Christian monotheism

coerces the female principle, projecting the threatening dimension of

woman into the domain of the abject:

biblical impurity is permeated with the tradition of defilement; in that

sense, it points to but does not signify an autonomous force that can be

threatening for divine agency...such a force is rooted historically (in the

history of religions) and subjectively (in the structuration of the subject’s

identity), in the cathexis of the maternal function—mother, women,

reproduction...[and]...performs the tremendous forcing that consists in

subordinating maternal power (whether historical or phantasmatic, natural

or reproductive) to symbolic order as pure logical order regulating social

performance. (K 90-91)

It seems relevant to acknowledge, in light of this statement, that the

inward aspect and trajectory cultivated by Ancrene Wisse, always

stands in negative relation to the outward exemplarity of the life of

enclosure, which is essentially carried out and settled as a social

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performance for the benefit of the local community.49 The curious

paradox of anchoritic ontology, of course, is that the recluse becomes

an absence in her very presence, an opaque, inscrutable object at the

heart of society, present only before the presencing of God. In

several instances Ancrene Wisse frames the female principle in terms

of a purely negative space, and as such, as excavating ‘þe deope

dich of sum suti sunne’ (M 87). The lure of the anchoress consists in

her presence-as-absence. A passive, engulfing void, she

[b]itacneð bi þeo þet vnwrið þe put. Þe put is hire feire neb, hire hwite

swire, hire lichte ehnen...Ȝet beoð hire word put, bute ha beon þe bet iset.

Al [þet] þe feaȝeð hire, hwet-se hit eauer beo, þurch hwat machte sonre fol

[luue] awacnin—al vre Lauerd put cleopeð. (M 23)50

To some extent, this blazon can be read as a conventional projection

of the male gaze that sublimates anxiety about the limitless potential

of female sexuality, simultaneously disclosing the deathly dimension

with which jouissance—as pure libidinal drive—is perpetually

interwoven.51 For Lacan,

sublimation takes on aesthetic as well as moral value; and the starkness

and awesomeness of the Kantian sublime are harnessed to [his] view that

the drive which is sublimated is not just our friendly old sex urge but the

far more alarming death drive....Sublimation then, takes on a much more

precise, if abstract, meaning: it involves putting an object in the place

49 On this dynamic, see Geraldine Heng, ‘Pleasure, resistance, and a feminist aesthetics of reading’ in The Cambridge Companion to Feminist Literary Theory (Cambridge, 2006), 61; and Cannon’s ‘Form of the Self’, (2001), 47-48. Also Cannon, ‘Place of the Self’, 164-9.50 Cf. R. Howard Bloch, Medieval Misogyny, (Chicago, 1991), 241-42.51 On the blazon as a strategy whereby the male gaze verbalizes itself see Coppélia Kahn, ‘Lucrece: The Sexual Politics of Subjectivity’ in Rape and Representation, eds. Higgins and Silver, (New York, 1991), 142.

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where we sense the [the pressure of the real] in such a way as to block it

out, and so dam up the real of the drives, in particular the death drive,

behind it52

The construction of female sexuality, and subjectivity, as a pit, a

maw, a gap which threatens to engulf, thus provides an exemplary

manifestation of the traumatic anxiety, concerning the limits of the

Real, in which male fantasy originates and is worked through.53

In a radical reversal of this somewhat overdetermined feminist

discourse, however, Slavoj Žižek demonstrates how the feminine

principle-as-void in fact points to her primacy within the Christian

ethic. Citing the ‘paradoxical dialectic of the Limit and its Beyond,’

which for Lacan, demonstrates how ‘the incomplete “causes” the

complete, [and how] the Imperfect opens up the place subsequently

filled out by the mirage of the Perfect,’54 Žižek goes on to argue (pace

Elizabeth Robertson (1990)) that

[f]rom this perspective, the seemingly misogynist definition of woman as

truncated man actually asserts her ontological priority: her “place” is that

of a gap, of an abyss rendered invisible the moment “man” fills it out. Man

is defined by the dynamic antinomy: beyond his phenomenal, bodily

existence, he possesses a noumenal soul. If in opposition to it, “woman

has no soul,” this is no way entails that she is simply an object devoid of

52 Sarah Kay, Courtly Contradictions, (Stanford, 2001), 261-2.53 For an extensive treatment of this topic see Klaus Theweleit, ‘Floods, Bodies, History’, in Male Fantasies, trans. Conway, (Minneapolis, 1987), I, 229-438. Originally published as Männerphantasien, (1977).54 c.f. Anselm’s ontological proof: Ergo, Domine, non solum es quo maius cogitari nequit, sed es quiddam maius quam cogitari possit. Quoniam namque valet cogitari esse aliquid huiusmodi: si tu non es hoc ipsum, potest cogitari aliquid maius te; quod fieri nequit., Proslogion, §15.

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soul. The point rather is this negativity, this lack as such, defines her: she

is the Limit, the abyss retroactively filled out by the mirage of soul.55

The anchoress is thus privileged by her very capaciousness and

facility in breaking down the mind-forged manacles of experience.

The cultivation of ‘schir heorte,’ which is the primary object of

Ancrene Wisse’s regulatory paradigm, might consist not so much in

the accretion and development of range of discursive and cognitive

practices, as in the purificatory elimination of the attachments

signified by the representational matrix of the subcelestial world:

Auerte oculos meos ne uideant vanitatem...’went awei min echnen

from þe worldes dweole’ (M 25). To set oneself at this vocation is a

daunting and traumatic endeavour and its rewards intrinsically resist

discursive explanation, for the mystical frontier, ultimately, is beyond

the potential of the signified. This is so difficult,

because as human speaking subjects, we can only sense the real from the

perspective of language, as a kind of hole on the edge of language or,

more frighteningly, as the traumatic otherness of language itself, as a

terrible machine imposed on us by outside: an outside, in this case, that is

right inside us, because without language in our minds we couldn’t even

conceive of our own existence’56

Given what we have seen of the heart’s symbolicity in Ancrene Wisse,

as a type of organon for the ineffable, non-linguistic dimensions of

experience, and as an essential kernel of subjectivity somehow

extrinsic to and yet emerging from the signifying apparatuses of the

reading Subject, we might ultimately locate its operation as a 55 Tarrying with the Negative, (Duke, 1993), 58.56 Kay, Courtly Contradictions, 262.

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function of the objet petit a; a symbolic provision of ‘the fantasmatic

“stuff of the I”...that which confers on the split subject, on the fissure

in the symbolic order, on the ontological void that we call “subject,”

the ontological consistency of a “person,” the semblance of a fullness

of being.’57 In its perpetual definition, and redefinition of the limits of

subjectivity and in its inhabiting of the porous margin between the

cognitive and somatic realms (as well as the traumatic boundary

between the abject and the nourishing), Ancrene Wisse weaves a

discursive skein that gives contours, a surface, and a planisphere to

the unsignifiable, and yet endlessly signified, object that masks over

and occludes the self-abnegating Real of the spiritual life and the

zero-sum of Absolute Unitary Being. Over and again, the shape taken

by the objet petit a, at the centre of the ontology referred to and

conditioned by this text is more or less coextensive that of the heart

itself.

57 Tarrying with the Negative, 48.

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