Aufbauseminar Glimpses of the Otherworld The Visionary Experience from Visio St Pauli to Pearl Mi 12:30-14:00

Texts depicting visionary experiences were especially popular during the Middle Ages. Their appeal has been, in particular, the glimpse into realms which under 'normal' circumstances were hidden to a general public. Visionary texts therefore allowed access to not only these otherwise hidden realms, but also to their specific revelations and insights. These texts thus excude an allure and magnatism that attracts audiences to this day - best attested to by examples such as Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love, or Dante Alleghieri's Divine Comedy, which are both popular items on Internet Marketplaces as well as ebook stores. But how do such texts that depict visionary experiences work? How does their allure and magnetism come to be? What is the visionary experience that is depicted and such texts, and how is it made accessible to its audience?  There are the main questions that this semester's seminar will be focusing on. We will being by attempting to answer the questions -What is a vision?- and how the concept of the vision, an extraordinary event during which the boundaries of the human and 'divine' are transcended, can be translated to the literary form. Towards the end of the semester, we will revisit this aspect by questioning a popular distinction of visions into authentic and literary - a distinction that implies a spectrum of actual lived experience and imagined experience.  This is followed by an analysis of the Visio Sancti Pauli, a third century apocryphal text that greatly influenced the medieval conception of the afterlife. Concerned with the immediate fate of the soul after death, this texts provides an account of a visionary experience during which the Apostle Paul travels the realms of heaven and hell, witnessing not only the judgment of souls, but also their sufferings in the pits of hell, and their joys in the gardens of heaven. We will deconstruct this text to isolate not only its main features, but also its structure and content, that all contributed to its broad popularity and heavy appeal. Using the Visio Sancti Pauli as a model, or prototype, we will trace these isolated structures, contents and features in respective Old and Middle English texts. For the Old English period, we will focus on the Anglo-Saxon poem The Dream of the Rood and Bede's prose account of Dryhthelm's Vision. Though separated into two distinct genres, the two texts show many similarities which we will investigate, as well as compare and contrast their differences. For the ME period, we will look at the Visio Tnugdali, Julian of Norwich's Shewings and the poem Pearl. Written in the mid-fourteenth century, the Shewings record the visionary experience of the mystic Julian of Norwich. Here, we will investigate how this vision in the tradition of mysticism compares and contrasts to the previos vision texts, and what differences and similarities there are concerning the features, structure and content of our 'model' and the OE vision texts. This investigation will be continued with the late fourteenth century poem Pearl, a poem usually identified as a 'classical' dream-vision poem, as well as the late 15th century translation Visio Tnugdali, a poetic account of the Knight Tundale's visit to the realms of heaven and hell. All texts will be uploaded to ILIAS   Primary texts include The Visio Sancti Pauli (Latin) The Dream of the Rood (OE) Dryhthelm's Vision (OE) The Shewings of Julian of Norwich (ME) Pearl (ME)   Voraussetzungen Kernfach Anglistik: alle vier Basismodule, Vertiefungsmodul Ergänzungsfach Anglistik: mindestens Basismodul Mediävistik Leistungsnachweis  BN Requirements:   - - - - -  participation in an expert group + ILIAS worksheet   AP/Final Exams:   - - - - - Oral Exams at the end of the semester or written exam in form of a Hausarbeit/term paper. Zielgruppe All students, but above all, students who are not intimidated by a lively class discussion! Anglistik u.Amerikanistik (BA, PO 2013) Kernfach Kernfach Anglistik: alle vier Basismodule, Vertiefungsmodul Ergänzungsfach Anglistik: mindestens Basismodul Mediävistik  BN Requirements:   - - - - -  participation in an expert group + ILIAS worksheet   AP/Final Exams:   - - - - - Oral Exams at the end of the semester or written exam in form of a Hausarbeit/term paper. Universität Düsseldorf WiSe 2016/17 Berovic Irena