Conversion as an exemplary experience in the 14th century and today: Narrative-comparative approaches to the exemplum (original) (raw)
What should we learn from another individual’s experience? What kind of narrated experiences become cultural masterplots and genres in different historical contexts? This article introduces an approach to medieval exemplary narratives of conversion that combines narrative theory and comparatist attention to the histor- ical context and forms of narrative experientiality. We take two exempla from the sermon of the feast of the canonization of Saint Birgitta as our test case. The historical specificity of narrative didac- ticism is further highlighted by comparing medieval exempla with social media-fuelled stories of personal conversion-like transforma- tion that gain representative and normative power in today’s nar- rative environments. Who are the saints and sinners in today’s social media didacticism? Our narrative-theoretical and comparative ana- lysis focuses on conversion as a replicable model experience and a prototypical element of a shareable narrative. We also pay atten- tion to the dynamics of narrative authorization in medieval and contemporary narrative environments and sketch an interdisciplin- ary synthesis of the genre of the exemplum as a narrative form.
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Ryan Szpiech’s Conversion and Narrative deftly analyzes medieval conversion narratives from the twelfth to fifteenth centuries, focusing its inquiry on the Western Mediterranean in geographic, linguistic, and religio-cultural terms. The central aim of the work is an investigation of first-person stories and their place in religious apologetic and polemical discourse. Of particular importance is Szpiech’s attempt to blur or dissolve the boundaries between historiography and literary studies, between the historical artifact and the literary text. By questioning the notion that the reader must assume that a personal account of conversion “happened” as it is narrated, Szpiech directs the reader towards the texts as representation. That is, conversion narratives are representations, not (necessarily) in the derridean sense, but in the polemical and exegetical tradition of religious dispute. Borrowing from Karl Morrison’s study of medieval conversion, Szpiech cautions that “one must disti...
Introduction: Conversion Narratives in the Early Modern World
Journal of Early Modern History, 2013
In the early modern world the process of describing a conversion experience was often as important, and problematic, as the conversion itself, and the resulting texts illustrate the extent to which conversion and its effects permeated cultural forms. Charting the discursive nature of conversion narratives, which were frequently translated into foreign languages and crossed international boundaries, this introduction discusses the problems inherent in narrating religious change, considers the current historiography, and outlines the premise for this collection.
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