Book explores what it means to live – and die – well
Hannah Lucas launched her fascinating book, Impossible Recovery, at Newnham this week, outlining some of its themes in a conversation with Professor Anthony Bale. In the book, she explores the entanglement of illness and revelation in the writings of medieval mystic Julian of Norwich.
Julian was 30 years old in 1373 when she became critically ill and, while in that state, saw a series of divine revelations. After recovering, Julian entered an anchor cell to dedicate her life to God. There she set down her revelations in what is the oldest surviving English-language text by a woman.
Julian’s manuscript contains the striking quote that ‘All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well’. In responding to the text, Hannah explores commonalities between the medical and the mystical and their significance for philosophies of wellbeing.
“Although her quote sounds like optimism it was much more than that. She turns towards suffering: all shall be well... in the pain,” Hannah said.
Bringing in elements of philosophy and literary studies, Hannah considers Julian’s texts with a post-Heideggerian phenomenology of health, “to think through Julian’s insights into what it means to be at home in the world, and to live and die well”.
From the very first sentence she acknowledges the difficulties. ‘An impossible problem connects visionary literature about encountering God with accounts of extreme illness. Both genres deal with the unsayable, with the outermost edges of human experience.’
Undaunted, Hannah, who is the Newby Trust Research Fellow at Newnham College, advances existential questions about the possibilities of recovery, what it means to live well and relate to death as a possibility.
Impossible Recovery: Julian of Norwich and the Phenomenology of Well-Being (Columbia University Press, 2025)
You can read more about the research in this feature: In contemplation of wellbeing