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Books by Sarah Powrie

This volume assembles a collection of studies investigating ways that textual practices in the cl... more This volume assembles a collection of studies investigating ways that textual practices in the classical and medieval periods generated collective and individual expressions of identity. Engaging in dialogue with Brian Stock’s contributions to the history of literacy, the essays initiate new conversations about models of interpretation, habits of reading, textual communities, and forms of self-writing.

The first group of essays, featuring Seth Lerer, Paul Saenger, and Sarah Spence, not only reflects upon the influence of Stock’s Augustine the Reader, but also examines Augustine’s innovative handling of texts within the literary culture of Late Antiquity. The following group, authored by John Magee, Constant J. Mews, and Marcia L. Colish, responds to The Implications of Literacy by examining ways that the reinterpretation of inherited texts can generate philosophical schools, social reformists, and textual communities. Subsequent contributions by Willemien Otten and Sarah Powrie investigate textual expressions of created nature and thereby build upon the work of Myth and Science in the Twelfth Century.

The last three essays by Gur Zak, Jane Tylus, and Catherine Conybeare explore Augustine’s enduring influence beyond the medieval period, as evidenced in the writings of Giovanni Conversini, Catherine of Sienna, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. In so doing, these authors advance the frameworks of After Augustine and Listening for the Text. Personal tributes by Aviad Kleinberg and Natalie Zemon Davis bookend the volume, with each author recollecting fragments of conversations that have shaped a decades-long friendship with the honoree.

Papers by Sarah Powrie

https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/article/840480/summary

https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9sz0n2bb, 2021

Connotations: A Journal for Critical Debate, 2015

As the second of two commemorative poems marking Elizabeth Drury's untimely death, John Donne... more As the second of two commemorative poems marking Elizabeth Drury's untimely death, John Donne's The Second Anniversarie revisits the theme of mortality from a perspective that is more private and introspective than that of its predecessor. While The First Anniversarie addresses its reading audience as it catalogues evidence of decay throughout the physical universe, the second poem features an interior conversation between the speaker and his soul regarding the mysteries of the soul's hidden aptitudes and its afterlife.1 The technique of inner colloquy as a means to disclose the soul's nature is fundamentally Augustinian in origin, being most evident in his early dialogues, but also implicitly shaping his discussions of selfknowledge.2 Augustine uses the framework of inner dialogue to focus his mental attention on the interior self and thereby disclose interior truths hidden within the soul's cognitive capacities. The Second Anniversarie, designed to trace the Pr...

Modern Philology, 2016

It has become a critical commonplace to acknowledge that the garden setting of Chaucer’s Parliame... more It has become a critical commonplace to acknowledge that the garden setting of Chaucer’s Parliament of Fowls (ca. 1380) is a locus amoenus. Ernst Curtius coined this literary term to describe the idyllic landscapes of classical poetry and medieval courtly romances, in which the natural setting serves to celebrate the beauty of youthful love or to showcase the poet’s artistic virtuosity. As illustrating examples, Curtius pointed to pastoral and courtly traditions, including works by Virgil, Ovid, and Matthew of Vendôme, but largely overlooked the biblical tradition of paradise allegories. Critical discussions of the Parliament’s horticultural landscape reflect Curtius’s courtly emphasis, more often tracing the work’s literary lineage to verses of amour courtois or to Boccoccio’s Teseida (ca. 1340) than to scriptural commentaries allegorizing the garden of Genesis. Yet the Parliament’s preoccupations with desire, choice, and right action clearly signal its textual continuities with the moral landscape of Eden. Curtius’s locus amoenus functions as a stylistic ornamental feature of pastoral poetry. By contrast, the landscape of Chaucer’s Parliament presents an ethically

The Review of English Studies, 2016

Renaissance and Reformation, 2015

Nicholas of Cusa's De Ludo Globi(1463) explores the tensions between the soul's terrestrial and t... more Nicholas of Cusa's De Ludo Globi(1463) explores the tensions between the soul's terrestrial and transcendent aspirations, between its desire to engage materiality through creative self-expression or to remove itself from its historically-bound identity in mystical contemplation. Many of Cusa's arguments about the soul in this work are indebted to Augustine's De Quantitate Animae (388), and while the cardinal emphasizes different capacities of the soul, many of his analogies represent modified derivations originating from this Augustinian source. Clearly Cusa's most significant appropriation is the dialogical framework itself, which being situated at the threshold between discursive reason and mystical contemplation becomes an effective vehicle for exploring the soul's cognitive and spiritual aptitudes. While both dialogues illustrate the rational or creative capacities of the embodied soul, both works ultimately acknowledge the limitations of these capacities, and of the dialogic form itself, when compared to the higher reaches of the soul's contemplative powers.

Chaucer Review, 2015

Chaucer's Parliament of Fowls muses upon the relation between knowing and desiring, and in so doi... more Chaucer's Parliament of Fowls muses upon the relation between knowing and desiring, and in so doing, raises questions about the respective roles of the intellect and will in determining moral action. Reflecting the influence of late medieval voluntarism, the dream vision challenges the classical/Thomistic view that moral virtue results from reason's prudent judgments. Representing a host of avian and human agents motivated by " wil, and herte, and thought, " (417) the dream vision asks readers not only to evaluate the rational and affective forces shaping different acts of choice, but also to note the limitations of reason. The bookish narrator's recurrent missteps point to the potential inefficacy of prudent reason, demonstrating that individuals often act against their better

Organized Conferences by Sarah Powrie