Publisher's Synopsis
Relics, Resilience, and Trauma in Medieval England highlights relics and their intersection with trauma. Relics represent both trauma, in terms of a catastrophic event that lingers and remains partly obscured or forgotten, and resilience and recovery, as these holy remnants effect healing and forgiveness, linking the mortal and divine realms. Focusing on the rise of relics in the English literature and history and haunted by Thomas Becket's martyrdom, adoration, and erasure, Relics, Resilience, and Trauma in Medieval England moves from medieval England to early modern England, outlining how relics reflect the traumatic consequences not only of originary martyrdom, afflictions, and death, but also of the Henrician religious revolution. Central to Relics, Resilience, and Trauma in Medieval England is the evolving understanding between memory and trauma, which relics embody.
