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Cargando... The Anchoress (2015)por Robyn Cadwallader
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. Pretty sure I came across this because of a CR review. A short-ish novel about a woman who anchoress to become the anchoress of an abbey. In the middle ages the practice of walling up a woman gave prestige and extra bonus holiness to the church. I’m extremely fascinated and a little repulsed by the practice, but books about characters who chose these constrained lifestyles interest me greatly. What I liked about the book was it’s quietness. We are with Sarah through her very human struggles with the physical and emotional tolls of such a life, and though there are dramatic parts, it still feels sort of subdued. An outstanding debut novel which explores the psychology of extreme devotion: in 13th-century England a 17-year-old girl is willingly "buried alive," shut up in a single room for the rest of her life so she can devote herself to prayer and contemplation. But no (wo)man is an island: she has two maids and a confessor, although curtains are supposed to separate them at all times. A cat also insists on joining her. Richly evocative of its time and place yet very accessible. A gentle, thoughtful debut novel, The Anchoress tells of Sarah, a teenage girl from thirteenth-century England who chooses to live the most enclosed type of religious life. Permanently locked into a small chamber attached to the wall of a rural parish church, Sarah "dies" to the world around her in order to spend her life in unfettered contemplation and prayer. That, at least, is the hope—but although Sarah can no longer see the faces of those with whom she communicates, or even a scrap of sky, she finds that it's not so easy to remove herself from ongoing events or from the consequences of her past. Robyn Cadwallader clearly knows a great deal about medieval Christian understandings of the body, gender, and faith, but wears that learning lightly—this is not a novel which feels didactic. Just as impressively, Cadwallader has created a cast of characters whom the modern reader can find sympathetic but whose way of thinking is of their time.
Robyn Cadwallader plays gracefully with medieval ideas about gender, power and writing: if the Bible is the written word of God, who may read it? What might women learn from their exclusion? The classic early-modern poetic comparisons between the room, the womb and tomb are lightly carried and masterfully used at what is probably the gentle climax of the story.
"England, 1255. Sarah is only seventeen when she chooses to become an anchoress, a holy woman much like Saint Hildegard of Bingen, shut away in a small cell, measuring seven by nine paces, at the side of the village church. Fleeing the grief of losing a much-loved sister in childbirth and the pressure to marry, she decides to renounce the world, with all its dangers, desires, and temptations, and to commit herself to a life of prayer. But it soon becomes clear that even the thick, unforgiving walls of her cell cannot keep the outside world away, and Sarah's body and soul are still in great danger"-- No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)823.92Literature English English fiction Modern Period 2000-Clasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
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