Cultivating the Heart

Cultivating the Heart examines the nurturance of feeling – especially the intertwined affective stirrings of compassion, love, and sorrow – in a range of religious texts from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. These texts encourage, stimulate, define and attempt to express the ‘cultivation of hearts’, an image inspired by Part VII of Ancrene Wisse , whereby readers and audiences of the texts nurture a range of sophisticated ‘affective literacies’. In addition to extensive analysis of English,