Date of Award

Fall 9-8-2025

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

English

First Advisor

Ian Cornelius

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes conceptual metaphors of psychological motion and stability in medieval English religious literature. I trace how language itself structures cultural approaches to epistemology, spiritual knowing, and virtue. Chapter One examines Alfred’s translation of Neoplatonic metaphors of psychological movement in the OE translations of The Consolation of Philosophy and Augustine’s Soliloquies. I argue that the reconfiguration of these metaphors into images of stability reveals an epistemology centered on certainty. Chapter Two compares the omission of motive psychological metaphor in Cynewulf’s Juliana and Ælfric’s “St. Agatha and St. Lucy” in process of translation. While Cynewulf’s depiction of virtue through stability allies him with common Old English idiom, Ælfric’s commitment to Platonism motivates him to avoid of metaphorical stability and movement alike. I then examine Ancrene Wisse and the “Katherine Group” and their rhetorical use of metaphor from a range of cultural and linguistic source domains. These metaphors invoke associations from their original contexts to fuse the secular with the sacred. Finally, I suggest that Julian of Norwich develops Boethian metaphors of both movement and stability in service of her incarnational theory of the soul in Revelations of Divine Love. My research traces the ever-changing nature of the English language and psychology through the cross-cultural discourses instantiated by war, invasion, trade, and the translation of Greek and Arabic tracts into Latin. I argue that linguistic flux, whether driven through multilingualism, time, or innovations of literary discourse and register, is a structuring force for cultural ethics regarding the body, mind, and soul. Religious and pedagogical approaches to their governance are therefore deeply embedded in the conceptual framework of language as well as literary genre and linguistic register

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