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Impossible Recovery
Impossible Recovery
Julian of Norwich and the Phenomenology of Well-Being
Columbia University Press, 2025
The medieval mystic Julian of Norwich (1342–after 1416) is the first known woman to author a book in the English language, recognized today for her strikingly optimistic claim that “all shall be well.” Her visionary text Revelations of Divine Love is the product of many years of contemplation, written and revised after a life-changing event of near-fatal illness and divine revelation.
Hannah Lucas explores the entanglement of illness and revelation in Julian’s writings, illuminating the unexpected commonalities between the medical and the mystical and their significance for philosophies of health. Framed by an original application of post-Heideggerian philosophy, Impossible Recovery offers a vivid new interpretation of the medieval mystic as crafting a proto-phenomenological theology of well-being. Lucas’s careful readings pay close attention to Julian’s mystical language and poetics, revealing the surprising resonances of her writings with modern and postmodern thought. Refracted through Julian’s Revelations, this book advances a powerful existential query about the possibilities of recovery—of well-being, and of medieval history.
Published January 2025. Order your copy here using the code CUP20 for 20% discount.
Reviews of Impossible Recovery
Reviews of Impossible Recovery
“This is a deeply creative and fresh study of one of the greatest medieval visionaries by a scholar who combines first-class historical and textual acumen with keen awareness of the way in which modern philosophies of embodied (and gendered) consciousness open up new questions and insights in the reading of premodern texts, especially around issues of suffering and healing. It is an invaluable contribution to the study of Julian of Norwich, but is also a brilliant intervention in a range of contemporary debates.”
—Rowan Williams, former archbishop of Canterbury, author of The Edge of Words: God and the Habits of Language
“Hannah Lucas’s highly adept use of contemporary theories of being, well-being, language, and existentialism in this study is both arresting and effective in offering new insights into Julian’s work and her writerly mission. It comprises one of the most important recent interventions into the field of Julian studies and will be an essential book for those interested in the interplay between theory, women’s writing, and the mystical encounter.”
—Liz Herbert McAvoy, author of The Enclosed Garden and the Medieval Religious Imaginary
"An astoundingly original book. Its interpretive project blasts away the rote conventions of writing about the Middle Ages, to chart a new sense of 'recovery' in the writings of Julian of Norwich and beyond. Lucas has forged a luminous study that unites philosophy, theology, the history of mysticism, and poetics."
—Julie Orlemanski, author of Symptomatic Subjects: Bodies, Medicine, and Causation in the Literature of Late Medieval England
"Hannah Lucas has written a learned, immersive, intellectually wide-ranging, and often exhilarating analysis of Julian's book and the 'theory of human existence as an ongoing process of seeking understanding.' Impossible Recovery is one of the most original and compelling studies of a medieval contemplative text of the past twenty-five years."
—Nicholas Watson, author of Balaam's Ass: Vernacular Theology Before the English Reformation, Volume 1: Frameworks, Arguments, English to 1250
Forthcoming
Book: Richard Whitford's A Work for Householders for Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies: The Syon Abbey Editions Series, ed. by Alexander Da Costa and Hannah Lucas (Liverpool University Press, forthcoming 2025).
Article: 'On Frustration: Reading Margery Kempe in the Classroom', New Chaucer Studies: Pedagogy & Profession (forthcoming 2025).
Chapter: 'Mystical Theology and the Phenomenology of Health', in The Routledge Handbook of Spirituality, Religion, and Medical Humanities, ed. Adam J. Powell, Chris Cook, and Kristy Slominski (forthcoming 2025).
Chapter: 'The Afterlives of Julian of Norwich', in Boydell Companion to Devotional Literature, ed. Hetta Howes, Michelle Sauer, and Sarah Salih (forthcoming 2025).
Peer-Reviewed Articles
'D. W. Winnicott, Julian of Norwich, and the Good-Enough Mother/Mystic', American Imago 81.3 (2024), 10.1353/aim.2024.a940329
'Negative Capabilities: Investigating Apophasis in AI Text-to-Image Models', Religions 14.6 (2023), 10.3390/rel14060812
'Passion and Melancholy: Julian of Norwich’s Medical Hermeneutic’, Review of English Studies (2020), 10.1093/res/hgaa022.
‘Private Pilgrimages at Syon Abbey? A Note on Cambridge University Library MS Ff.6.33’, Notes and Queries 66.2 (2019), 219-22, 10.1093/notesj/gjz012.
‘“Clad in flesch and blood”: The Sartorial Body and Female Self-Fashioning in The Book of Margery Kempe’, Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures 45.1 (2019), 29-60, 10.5325/jmedirelicult.45.1.0029.
‘Locating More: The Dialogical Gardenscapes of Thomas More and Ellis Heywood’s Il Moro’, Moreana 53.205-6 (2016), 179-96, 10.3366/more.2016.53.3-4.11.
Book Reviews
'Nicole R. Rice, The Medieval Hospital: Literary Culture and Community in England (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2023)', Review of English Studies (2023), 10.1093/res/hgad097.
'Sara M. Koenig, Bathsheba Survives (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2018)', Theology 123.1 (2020), 43-45, 10.1177/0040571X19883536a.
'Philip Sheldrake, Julian of Norwich: “In God’s Sight”, Her Theology in Context (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley Sons, 2018)', Theology 122.4 (2019), 305–6, 10.1177/0040571X19843769.
Public Writing
'Recovery Without End: Insights from a Medieval Mystic?', Columbia University Press Blog (2025).
'Reflections on the Contemplation: theory / practice Research Network', CRASSH Blog (2024).
‘Reading and Health in the Medieval Convent’, Early Medicine Blog – The Wellcome Trust (2017).
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