Revelation, in short, utilizes Vision’s structures and its own to implode structure. Finally, this study explores how many of the characters from Vision are made twofold in Revelation, while Revelation at the same time foreshadows the union this doubleness will achieve at the end of time. Moreover, this analysis shows that the focalization already found in Vision is made more demonstrative in Revelation, while the narrator directs this gaze more towards the apophatic and what is always hidden. At the same time, narrator Julian constructs an omnitemporal, non-sequential plot. As regards these narrative structures, this study argues that linear finite narrative desire driving the plot of Vision is taken up into an endless, greater narrative desire in Revelation, creating a circular plot. This greatest structure, however, is only glimpsed. That is, Revelation reshapes its own new narrative structures, in order to hint at God’s greater structure and envelop its own in His. At the same time, however, within Revelation a similar narrative reshaping can be seen as between Vision and Revelation. On the basis of this exploration, this study argues that Revelation includes, expands and transforms the narrative structures of Vision, and thereby consciously draws more attention to the structures themselves. Following narratologist Mieke Bal, this discussion distinguishes between fabula (the raw material), story (the content of the text) and text (the linguistic construct). The second is distinguishing several hermeneutic layers or levels of signification in a narrative. The first is to make a distinction between narrator Julian, who tells about the events, and character Julian, who experiences the events.
Two central narratological methods are used throughout. Three analytical angles help shed more light on Julian’s innovative use of these structures in her works: modern narratology, Middle English literary theory and practice, and the texts’ own literary concepts and self-referential comments. These three narrative features are brought into dialogue with Julian’s theology. This dissertation therefore examines Vision and Revelation in terms of three narrative features: plot, characterization and perspective or point of view (termed ‘focalization’ here). It focuses Julian as a storyteller rather than as a theologian, mystic or visionary, concentrating particular on her narrative strategies, that is, on the strategic use of formal narrative features and the changes in these between Vision and Revelation. Full text of doctoral thesis available from: This study offers a narrative comparison of A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman and A Revelation of Love, the two texts created by the first known English woman writer, Julian of Norwich (c.
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