Joanna Ludwikowska
“Forgive me father for I have sinned”: Puritan medievalism and the “early modern” sinner
The late Middle Ages and the seventeenth century in England seem to have little in common. Distant in time, divided by the Reformation, at first glance appear to belong to two different approaches to spirituality. After closer scrutiny, however, certain similarities are revealed regarding the role religion played for both late medieval, and seventeenth century communities. The late Middle Ages experienced a democratization of mystical experiences, stemming from a developing sense of a covenantal relation between God and people, which allowed for every true believer to experience a sense of union with Christ. Likewise, for Puritans the superior spiritual aim was to establish their own individual relationship with God, to discover (hopefully) their state of grace. Puritan ministers encouraged constant moral self-examination, and advised focusing if not on acquiring spiritual perfection, than at least on enabling the salvation of one’s soul by God. Handbooks written for the sake of such spiritual self-monitoring seem very much akin to late medieval devotional literature and sin manuals.
I will examine Richard Baxter’s The right method for a settled peace of conscience and spiritual comfort (1653) and Thomas Brooks’ Precious remedies against Satan’s devices (1652) against Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection (ca. 1380-1396), William Flete’s Remedies against temptations (ca.1380?) and selected sin manuals, in search for traces of the late medieval religious tradition in Puritan seventeenth century devotional writings. By analyzing the described reasons, effects and remedies for sin, I hope to point to similarities in the conceptualization of sin and penance, and thus to outline a peculiar Puritan medievalism in models of personal piety.
Paula Orzechowska
Why is /fakʧ/ easier to learn for Poles than Germans? An ERP study on the learnability of word-final phonotactics
Phonological knowledge of a language involves knowledge about the types of segments which can be combined under what conditions. Restrictions on the co-occurrence of consonants constitute an important domain of theoretical and empirical study. The present paper contributes to the debate on universal and languages-specific phonotactic constraints by examining the electrophysiological responses (ERP) to two fundamental phonotactic regularities possibly determining the emergence of consonant clusters; sonority and (non-)existence. The role that these two criteria play in the processing of words is discussed with reference to word-final -CC sequences in German and Polish.
