PhD defense: Esther van de Vate

On 18 December, Dr. Esther van de Vate defended her Ph.D. dissertation entitled, In Godt: Een fraseologisch onderzoek naar de orativiteit van Maria Petyt. The dissertation explored the topic of ‘orativity’ in letters by the seventeenth-century Carmelite hermit Maria Petyt (1623-1677) regarding various states of the soul in mystical experience. Orativity is the communicative momentum that takes place between the I of the believer and the You of the divine reality he/she is groping after. The dissertation employed a method from corpus linguistics to map the co-occurrence of two or more words in each other’s neighbourhood irrespective of whether those words are next to each other and/or occur in the same sequence. As a result, we have a clearer picture of Maria’s orativity which offers an important perspective for the future of the study of spirituality.

The dissertation can be purchased for € 22.50 excluding shipping costs and can be ordered via e.vandevate@hotmail.com