Leo A. Boonstra

My thesis (‘Touch sacred and profane: desire, divinity and the tactile in Greek romance and early Christianity’) studies the sense of touch in Greek imperial literature, with particular focus on Greek romance and the earliest Christian narratives. I argue that Greek romance and early Christian narrative—canonical gospels and Apocryphal Acts—bring an intense focus to touching. Touch in both sets of texts puts pressure on the meeting between the deeply embodied and something which transcends this material embodiment. In both cases, touchers hope or believe that the touch of another’s body might hold a power beyond the body, whether in the transcendent experience of love, or in the Christian meeting point of corporeal and divine. By reading these discourses through one another, my thesis demonstrates how the divine is inflected by the desirous, and vice versa, in the emphasis of corporeal touching.

I am originally from Sweden and did my undergraduate in Edinburgh before moving to Cambridge for Masters and PhD work. My project is co-funded by Cambridge Trust.