The Mystic and the Poet: Identity Formation, Deformation, and Reformation in Elizabeth Jennings' "Teresa of Avila" and Kathleen Jamie's "Julian of Norwich"

Though Elizabeth Jennings and Kathleen Jamie are two poets not often mentioned in the same breath, together they serve as a particularly striking example of the way postmodernism has changed the way the figure of the mystic can be deployed. Born 36 years apart, Jamie published her first book of poetry (Black Spiders, 1982) just as Jennings was putting the punctuation on her career. Their writing is vastly different in tone, with Jennings and her English, Roman Catholic, "Movement" sensibilities looking very different from Jamie and her focus on feminine subjectivity, "Scottishness," and travel. Both women, however, use the figure of the female Christian mystic in their poetry to espouse ideas that are beyond the contemporary norm: Jennings, using it to hold onto tradition when irrationality and innovation were the driving force behind the arts; and Jamie, questioning through it the accepted ideas of femininity and nationalism.