January 29: The History of the Peloponnesian War, by Thucydides
February 26: Revelations of Divine Love, by Julian of Norwich
March 26: 1984, by George Orwell
April 30: Revelation, from the Bible
May 28: Shakespeare and a Movie--The Tempest and "Forbidden Planet"
June 25, July 30, August 27: War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy
September 24: The Art of War, by Sun Tzu
October 29: Great Poetic Works (details to be announced)
December 3: Beowulf (Select books to read in 2011)
Please make note of any works you especially want to read, tell your friends, and join us for great conversation.
See you at the library!
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2 comments:
I can imagine that when some people look over the reading schedule they will wonder who Julian of Norwich is (the author of Revelations of Divine Love). That work was selected to fill the slot of a work by a female author. It is believed that Revelations of Divine Love is the first book written by a woman in the English language. It was originally written in Middle English, so we are reading modern English translations of her writing. There are not very many copies available through the libraries, so I suggest purchase of used paperback copies which are quite cheap on Amazon.com. Project Gutenberg doesn't have a copy. Unfortunately, she is not widely known, at least I had never heard of her before. So I have collected the following short description of her and the book, Revelations of Divine Love.
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Julian of Norwich (c. November 8, 1342 – c. 1416) is thought of as one of the greatest English mystics. Little is known of her life aside from her writings. Even her name is uncertain, the name "Julian" coming from the Church of St Julian in Norwich, where she was an anchoress (a type of hermit living in a cell attached to the church, engaged in contemplative prayer). At the age of 30, suffering from a severe illness and believing she was on her deathbed, Julian had a series of intense visions of Jesus Christ. (They ended by the time she overcame her illness on May 13, 1373.) She recorded these visions soon after having them, and then again twenty years later in far more theological depth. They are the source of her major work, called Sixteen Revelations of Divine Love (circa 1393). This is believed to be the first book written by a woman in the English language. Julian became well known throughout England as a spiritual authority.
CORRECTION TO MY PREVIOUS COMMENT (posted above).
Text of Revelations of Divine Love is available on-line at:
Link to TEXT
Long form of link:
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/julian/revelations.html
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