Abigail Palmisano

Dissertation Summary

My dissertation examines literary depictions of cognition throughout the English Middle Ages. I first examine how conceptual metaphors of movement in Latin texts are translated into metaphors of fixture in Old English. I connect these changes to distinctions in cultural epistemologies and wider matrices of conceptual metaphor which imagine fixture or enclosure as a form of proper religious and moral deportment. I then follow the inheritance of these ideas in Middle English and investigate the continuing evolution of vernacular epistemologies (and their religious implications) alongside classical, scholastic ones in writings of Julian of Norwich and Chaucer.  

Education

BA in English from Taylor University (2017); MA in English from Illinois State University (2019) 

Research Interests

Medieval Hagiography, Cognition, Old English Language and Literature, Middle English Language and Literature, Cognitive Linguistics, Vernacular Theology, and Book History