| Summary: | This thesis examines particular aspects and elements within the texts of Julian of Norwich, in light of certain of the tenets and concepts of Jaques Lacan, in order to attempt to offer a psychoanalytical reading of these facets of Julian's works. Specifically, this thesis addresses Julian's oft-evoked longing for a God who appears to manifest in several different guises - which appear in a recurring, non-linear and ven dialectical fashion throughout her accounts - in term's of Lacan's formulations on desire for the Thing, or an intense yearning for an elusive quantity that seems to rest within an object, yet which morphs of jumps into another object entirely, the moment the subject draws near. As part of this Lacanian reading of certain aspects within Julian's works, I examine the varying perceptions of the sought divinity which the texts portray and the perspectives or authorial voices from which they are offered in light of Lacan's conceptions of anamorphosis, the gaze and subject as object. Additionally, Julian's encounters with and textual descriptions of mortality are looked at through the prism of Lacan's notion of the 'space between two deaths'. This thesis draws to a close by examining Julian's discovery that the sought quantity resides within her own soul in light of Lacan's concept of desire for desire. Finally, after exploring, throughout this thesis, how the formulations of Jacques Lacan can be useful in illuminating elements within Julian's works, this thesis concludes by investigating whether there is some benefit to be gained from staging a dialogue between certain aspects of Julain's texts and specific elements of the psychoanalytic theory of Lacan.
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