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Breath and breathlessness are flashpoints in medieval literary texts. Medieval medical theories, rooted in classical thought, emphasise the bodily spirits and in particular, the ways that motions of the ‘vital spirit’—closely connected with breath—cause powerful physical responses that write emotions on the body in sighs, swoons, and even death. Physiological theory was complemented by theological notions of  pneuma , the Spirit of divinity and life. The movement of breath plays a key role in depictions of emotion from love to grief, and in visionary or mystical experience. This essay explores breath and breathlessness in a range of English secular and devotional literary texts: popular romance writing, the medically alert fictions of Chaucer, and visionary works including the  Revelations of Divine Love  of Julian of Norwich and the spiritual autobiography of Margery Kempe. In all these works, concepts of the vital spirits and the role of breath in emotion are central. The play of breath underpins and shapes depictions of romantic love, explorations of the boundary between life and death, and ideas of spiritual revelation, creating narratives of profoundly embodied, affective experience.

From Romance to Vision: The Life of Breath in Medieval Literary Texts