This is a glimpse of Paradise : Encountering Lourdes Through Serial and Multisited Pilgrimage

Based on fieldwork conducted with pilgrims traveling from England to the Marian apparition shrine of Lourdes, this article will focus on the experience of serial pilgrims, those who have made the journey to Lourdes repeatedly for several years. Serial pilgrimages to Lourdes are often a family affair, spanning multiple generations, and become compulsive for those who undertake them. Yet the stories of several Lourdes pilgrims reveal that they do not feel this compulsive need to go to Lourdes alone. Many frequently navigate the European circuit of Marian pilgrimage shrines, including Walsingham in England, Knock in Ireland, Fatima in Portugal, and Medjugorje in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Attending to the nature of serial and multi-sited pilgrimage underscores that pilgrimage shrines are not static, bounded sites. They indeed become porous as pilgrims travel between them, with cross-currents flowing back and forth. They become intimately familiar, a storehouse for memories of pilgrimages past, and sites for continued spiritual refreshment. Pilgrimages to multiple shrines punctuate the spiritual journey of the serial pilgrim, and as this article will show, also provide a means by which some shrines are contrasted and privileged over others, revealing the values and motivations underlying serial pilgrimage

Matelda in the Terrestrial Paradise

This analysis of the enigmatic figure of Matelda, guardian of the Terrestrial Paradise in Dante's Purgatorio, considers both the unresolved question of Matelda's historical identity, in particular whether Dante is alluding to the historical personage, Countess Matilda of Tuscany (1046-1115), and the numerous critical glosses that have emerged over the years, whereby Matelda has been interpreted as a symbolic figure, for example, as the biblical typology of the active/contemplative life, as the representation of human wisdom, or in a variety of other symbolic guises. Whilst alluding to recognisable idyllic poetic images, such as the donna angelicata of the vernacular tradition, Dante's conceptualisation of Matelda is nevertheless aligned to the pilgrim-poet's own development in via of a redemptive poetics in which the writer articulates an urgent message of reform, at both the secular and ecclesiastical levels. The linking of Matelda with the notion of the loss of the prelapsarian state of humankind's innocence and her supervision of the penitential cleansing rites performed on Dante-protagonist, in anticipation of his ascent to Paradise in the company of Beatrice, represent crucial moments in Dante's mapping out of prudential history for his readers and his call for a recovery of Christian values

Pearl and the medieval dream vision

Based on Classical and Biblical authorities, many medieval writers used the dream vision, either as a literary device, political subversion or as a way of conveying a mystical experience. In some ways the dream vision negated responsibility from the material they were conveying. This paper considers some uses of the medieval dream vision, with particular reference to the devotional, elegiac poem, Pear

Analysis of Corruption in Our Society

Corruption is one of the major problems of present day world, that is intangible in itself, but, plays a major role in our daily life, which either, directly or indirectly, is effecting our lives. Through this paper, we have tried to classify the types of corruption under five major headings

Climate Change and Our Political Future

Harry van der Linden\u27s review of Climate Leviathan: A Political Theory of Our Planetary Future. Geoff Mann and Joel Wainwright. Brooklyn, NY: Verso, 2018, ISBN 978178663429-0

Metamorphosis of the ideals and the actuals : blasphemy laws in Pakistan and the transplantation of justice in British India

While a genealogical exploration of the dichotomy between the real (legal) and the Ideal (justice) may provide us with an understanding of the historical and ideological relationship(s) between the two, a focus on this binary alone acts to conceal the multiplicities inherent in each of these terms. Just as there exist multiple manifestations of legalities/realities, these manifestations correspond to diverse notions of the ideal and justice. And these realities and ideals overlap and conflict, and affect each other’s creation, transformation or transplantation. A historical glance at Pakistan’s current Blasphemy Laws provides us with an insight on how the real/legal emerging from a particular notion of the ideal/justice was mediated and transplanted through Colonialism and became the real/legal manifestation of a different kind in a different locality