Victoria Cirlot

Victoria Cirlot is Professor of Romance Philology at the Faculty of Humanities at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona.

Her research focuses on the Middle Ages, especially the culture of chivalry and mysticism. Her books on Arthurian romance and troubadour lyric poetry include Figuras del destino. Mitos y símbolos de la Europa medieval (Figures of Destiny. Myths and Symbols of Medieaval Europe) and ‘Tot es niens’. Ocho ensayos sobre literatura medieval (‘Everything Is Nothing’. Eight Essays on Mediaeval Literature) (San Millán de la Cogolla).

In the field of mediaeval mysticism, she has studied Hildegard von Bingen (Vida y visiones de Hildegard von Bingen [Life and Visions of Hildegard von Bingen], 1997–2006) and other women mystics, in collaboration with Blanca Garí, in La mirada interior. Escritoras místicas y visionarias en la Edad Media (The Inner Gaze. Women Mystics and Visionaries in the Middle Ages).

She has explored visionary experience through comparative studies of the Middle Ages and the twentieth century in works such as Hildegard von Bingen y la tradición visionaria de Occidente (Hildegard von Bingen and the Visionary Tradition of the West) and La visión abierta. Del mito del Grial al surrealismo (The Open Vision: From the Myth of the Grail to Surrealism).

Her most recent books include Grial. Poética y mito (siglos XII-XV) (Grail. Poetics and Myth (12th–15th Centuries)); El monasterio interior (The Inner Monastery) (with various contributors); Luces del Grial (Lights of the Grail); Imágenes negativas. Las nubes en la tradición mística y la modernidad (Negative Images. Clouds in Mystical Tradition and Modernity), Viña del Mar, Chile, Mundana, 2019; Visión en rojo. Abstracción e informalismo en El libro de las revelaciones de Juliana de Norwich (Vision in Red. Abstraction and Informalism in The Book of Revelations by Julian of Norwich); Ariadna abandonada. Friedrich Nietzsche trabaja en el mito (Ariadne Abandoned. Friedrich Nietzsche Works on the Myth) and Taüll. Liturgia y visión en los ábsides románicos catalanes (Taüll. Liturgy and Vision in the Romanesque Apses of Catalonia). She is currently working on her forthcoming book from Vaso Roto: Marginalia.

She was curator of the exhibition ‘Emotions. Images and Gestures from Past and Present’, held at the Museu Frederic Marès in Barcelona from 30/11/2023 to 26/05/2024 (with a catalogue of the same title).