Paper short abstract:

This paper studies the role of mountains as sites of total devotion in late antique Latin texts about desert Christians. Mountains appear as sites of competition and spatial withdrawal: two important technologies of total devotion, with implications for both inside and outside the narrative world.

Paper long abstract:

This paper focuses on the role of mountains in the expression and narrativization of total devotion ideals in Latin stories of desert saints. Withdrawal in wilderness (anachoresis) is crucial to the practice of desert asceticism. Building on scholarship in the history of religion and religious radicalism, the paper singles out religious competition and spatial withdrawal as two ‘technologies of the self’: in Foucault’s sense of the term, embodied instruments to reach perfection. More specifically, it highlights the potential of withdrawal in wilderness places (mountains in particular) as a space of religious rivalry allowing the ascetic to reach a more perfect stage of devotion. Taking a narratological approach, I will argue that mountains play a role at three narrative levels: firstly, the fabula level, as sites of competition of ascetics with others in the wider community; secondly, the story level, denoting the way in which mountains are focalized and emotionally experienced by ascetics, surrounding figures and narrators and endorsed (or not) as instruments of total devotion; and, finally, the text level, which applies to the significance attached to mountains as sites of competition and devotion in the interaction between author and audience in the extra-narrative world. Thus, the paper gives insight into the role of stories and emotions in the expression and encouragement of individuals to total devotion, while highlighting the role of spatial withdrawal and competition as embodied instruments to reach religious perfection.