Abstract
Annie Dillard gained national prominence in 1975 when, at the age of twenty-nine, she won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for her second book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. She has since remained a preeminent literary figure in the United States, publishing twelve books in a variety of genres: a memoir and a collection of essays, two books of poetry, two novels, and six works she describes as nonfiction narratives. The texts in this last category are difficult to classify due to their range of subjects. Particularly problematic are Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and the book published shortly after it, Holy the Firm (1977), because in them Dillard grapples with issues of doubt and faith from a unique perspective informed by her wide reading and personal reflection. Julian of Norwich and other medieval mystics are among the authors who have influenced her, but the exact nature of Dillard’s debt to them has not been examined in detail.
Annie Dillard’s solution to the problem of evil in Holy the Firm reveals the profound influence of Julian of Norwich and the medieval mystical tradition.
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Notes
Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (New York: Harper’s Magazine Press, 1974), p. 11.
Edward Abbey, Abbey’s Road (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1979), p. xx.
Sandra Humble Johnson, The Space Between: Literary Epiphany in the Work of Annie Dillard (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1992), pp. 25–61.
James I. McClintock, “‘Pray Without Ceasing’: Annie Dillard among the Nature Writers,” in Earthly Words: Essays on Contemporary American Nature and Environmental Writers, ed. John Cooley (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994), p. 69
Margaret Loewen Reimer, “The Dialectical Vision of Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek,” Critique 24 (1983): 182
Bruce A. Ronda, “Annie Dillard and the Fire of God,” The Christian Century 100 (1983): 483
Peter S. Hawkins, “Annie Dillard: Pilgrim at Midstream,” The Christian Century 106 (1989): 592
Joseph Keller, “The Function of Paradox in Mystical Discourse,” Studia Mystica 6.3 (Fall 1983): 3–18
Jacob Gaskins, “‘Julie Norwich’ and Julian of Norwich: Notes and a Query,” 14th Century English Mystics Newsletter 6 (1980): 153–63.
Robert Paul Dunn, “The Artist as Nun: Theme, Tone and Vision in the Writings of Annie Dillard,” Studia Mystica 1.4 (1978): 17–31
Susan M. Felch, “Annie Dillard: Modern Physics in a Contemporary Mystic,” Mosaic 22.2 (spring 1989): 1–14.
Any discussion of mysticism is complicated by the variety of definitions of this term. Scholars disagree about whether mysticism should be regarded as a cross-cultural phenomenon or understood in relation to a particular historical and cultural context. Dana Wilde demonstrates the importance of clarifying the term “mysticism” in his analysis of three of Dillard’s later essays in “Annie Dillard’s ‘A Field of Silence’: The Contemplative Tradition in the Modern Age,” Mystics Quarterly 26 (2000): 31–45
Bernard McGinn, The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism, vol. 1, The Foundations of Mysticism (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1992), pp. xi–xx
Denys Turner, The Darkness of God: Negativity in Christian Mysticism (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 1–8.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), pp. 35–36.
William J. Scheick, “Annie Dillard: Narrative Fringe,” in Contemporary American Women Writers: Narrative Strategies, ed. Catherine Rainwater and William J. Scheick (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1985), p. 53
“Revelation of Love,” 14.51, in Writings of Julian of Norwich, ed. Watson and Jenkins, p. 283. For a discussion of the land of unlikeness in Julian of Norwich, see Denise N. Baker, Julian of Norwich’s Showings: From Vision to Book (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 93–96.
David N. Bell, The Image and Likeness: The Augustinian Spirituality of William of St. Thierry, Cistercian Studies Series 78 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1984), p. 23.
Denise N. Baker, “The Structure of the Soul and the ‘Godly Wylle’ in Julian of Norwich’s Showings,” in The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England: Exeter Symposium VII, ed. E.A. Jones (Cambridge, UK: D.S. Brewer, 2004), pp. 41–45
Bernard McGinn, The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism, vol. 4, The Harvest of Mysticism in Medieval Germany (New York: Crossroads Publishing, 2005), p. 85.
Meister Eckhart, The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises, and Defense, trans. Edmund Colledge, O.S.A., and Bernard McGinn, Classics of Western Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 1981), sermon 15, p. 192.
Rudolf Bernoulli, “Spiritual Development as Reflected in Alchemy and Related Disciplines,” in Spiritual Disciplines: Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks, trans. Ralph Manheim, Bollingen Series 30.4 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1960), p. 318
Antoine Faivre, Access to Western Esotericism, SUNY Series in Western Esoteric Traditions (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), p. 27.
Mircea Eliade, The Forge and the Crucible, trans. Stephen Corrin (New York: Harper, 1962
Alexander Roob, The Hermetic Museum: Alchemy & Mysticism (Cologne: Taschen, 1997), p. 123.
“A Face Aflame,” p. 18. Johnson, The Space Between, pp. 65–72, associates Dillard’s conception of the via positiva and via negativa with two different types of epiphany. See B. Jill Carroll, “An Invitation from Silence: Annie Dillard’s Use of the Mystical Concepts of Via Positiva and Via Negativa,” Mystics Quarterly 19 (1993): 26–33
Kevin Radaker, “Caribou, Electrons, and the Angel: Stalking the Sacred in Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek,” Christianity and Literature 46 (1997): 138–41
Bernard McGinn and Patricia Ferris McGinn, Early Christian Mystics: The Divine Vision of the Spiritual Masters (New York: Crossroads Publishing, 2003), p. 183.
Eleanor Wymard, “A New Existential Voice,” Commonweal 102 (1975): 496
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© 2009 Sarah Salih and Denise N. Baker
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Baker, D.N. (2009). Julie Norwich and Julian of Norwich: Annie Dillard’s Theodicy in Holy the Firm. In: Salih, S., Baker, D.N. (eds) Julian of Norwich’s Legacy. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230101623_6
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