A dissertation submitted by Saudamini Gigi Siegrist
in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree
of Doctor of Philosophy, Department of English, 
New York University, May 1999

 

The study of devotional writing is a framework for the relationship between the self and the other, the writer and the reader, the lover and the beloved. The devotional site is the meeting place between those two, recorded in the devotional exchange or dialogue that marks the gap and makes it readable as an invocation, binding together mutual textual counterparts.

The textual figures profiled in this study range from the 14th to the 20th century, including Teresa of Avila, Julian of Norwich, the anonymous Cloud of Unknowing, John Donne, Richard Crashaw, Terese of Liseux, Emily Dickinson and Sri Chinmoy.

[Only the Introduction and the chapter relating to Sri Chinmoy are included in this extract.] View PDF...