Affective meditation without borders: thirteenth-century Christian and Islamic texts in dialogue

Journal article

Medieval affective meditation has long been treated as a purely Euro-Christian phenomenon. But if we inhabit an avian perspective to look across geographical and cultural borders, we can find profound resonances with contemporary Sufi texts. In both Christian and Islamic contemplative traditions, encounter of the Divine is shaped by loving, meditative exchange with the Beloved, and the evocation of profound affective states of imagined intimacy. When texts of the English Wooing Group (c. 1220) are read alongside the vernacular or semi-vernacular poetry of Andalusian Abu Ḥasan al-Shushtarī (1212–1269), two powerful areas of correspondence emerge. Both vernacular corpora are characterized by a sensuous immersion in the Beloved, and in turn by a reflection on the hermeneutic limits of the meditative process. These are not ‘monastic’ texts in the strictest sense, but as anchoritic and Sufi texts (both traditions with strong emphasis on devotional reclusion and the following of religious ‘orders’), they have significant affinities with monastic practice, embodied especially in their concern with the processes of affective meditation.

Authors: Lazikani, A

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Brepols Publishers
• Journal: Journal of Medieval Monastic Studies
• Volume: 13
• Pages: 81-103
• Publication date: 2024-01-01
• Acceptance date: 2023-11-21
• DOI: 10.1484/J.JMMS.5.143505
• EISSN: 2034-3523
• ISSN: 2034-3515
• Language: English
• Keywords: meditation; anchoritism; Sufism; Shushtarī; Arabic; affect; Wooing Group; Al-Andalus; Middle English