Impossible Recovery

Reviews / Votes

This is the most exhilarating book in medieval studies I've read in some time. * Studies in the Age of Chaucer * [Impossible Recovery] is fascinating and well written, and it does a remarkable job of explaining phenomenology to a nonphenomenologist. * Social History of Medicine * Lucid, detailed, and compellingly written...a stellar first monograph, one that should be read by anyone with an interest in Julian of Norwich and medieval ideas of health and healing. * Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures * This is a deeply creative and fresh study of one of the greatest medieval visionaries by a scholar who combines first-class historical and textual acumen with keen awareness of the way in which modern philosophies of embodied (and gendered) consciousness open up new questions and insights in the reading of premodern texts, especially around issues of suffering and healing. It is an invaluable contribution to the study of Julian of Norwich, but is also a brilliant intervention in a range of contemporary debates. -- Rowan Williams, former archbishop of Canterbury, author of <i>The Edge of Words: God and the Habits of Language</i> Lucas's highly adept use of contemporary theories of being, wellbeing, language, and existentialism in this study is both arresting and effective in offering new insights into Julian's work and her writerly mission. It comprises one of the most important recent interventions into the field of Julian studies and will be an essential book for those interested in the interplay between theory, women's writing, and the mystical encounter. -- Liz Herbert McAvoy, author of <i>The Enclosed Garden and the Medieval Religious Imaginary</i> An astoundingly original book. Its interpretive project blasts away the rote conventions of writing about the Middle Ages to chart a new sense of "recovery" in the writings of Julian of Norwich and beyond. Lucas has forged a luminous study that unites philosophy, theology, the history of mysticism, and poetics. -- Julie Orlemanski, author of <i>Symptomatic Subjects: Bodies, Medicine, and Causation in the Literature of Late Medieval England</i> Hannah Lucas has written a learned, immersive, intellectually wide-ranging, and often exhilarating analysis of Julian's book and the 'theory of human existence as an ongoing process of seeking understanding.' Impossible Recovery is one of the most original and compelling studies of a medieval contemplative text of the past twenty-five years. -- Nicholas Watson, author of <i>Balaam's Ass: Vernacular Theology Before the English Reformation, Volume 1: Frameworks, Arguments, English to 1250 </i>