Recalling the Word: the Germanic Beguine "Sisters", Memory, and the Question of Genre

Despite the renaissance of interest in medieval mystical texts over the past three decades, an investigation of literary form and genre classifications has not yet occurred at great length. Shorter articles concerning genre and gender (e.g. Veerle Fraeter’s many articles on the subject come to mind) have often taken a contrary approach to Derrida’s lecture “The Law of Genre”, seeking to establish female-authored literature as comparable to that of men, and arguing for an even-handed application of theoretical analysis and treatment of women’s literature. Although beguine literature and other writings by women have often been classified by adjectives such as “emotional”, or in different terms than more scholastic writings, I argue that beguine mystical works be approached on par with that of other contemporaneous mystical writers (e.g. Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler, and a corpus of texts going back to St. Bernard of Clairvaux). Highlighting the works of three key beguine mystics—Hadewijch of Brabant, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and Agnes Blannbekin—my focus is that of (1) form and (2) the intrinsic relationship between form and content in order to depict the highly “individualistic” nature of each text, as well as the strong didactic reasoning at the heart of literary form selection and creation./nEach main chapter of my dissertation focuses on a different mystic, ordered chronologically, to provide the space to discuss the construction and organization of the texts written by Hadewijch, Mechthild and Agnes individually. Although textual form is the primary object of investigation, the body chapters also highlight the main themes within their writings, provide close readings of significant or exemplary chapters, and demonstrate the ways in which these themes and excerpts intersect. The underlying aspect behind the investigation of form and content outlined above is the interest in the connection between method and meaning, text creation and readership./nAlthough the discussion of each mystic’s work is outlined in Chapters Three through Five, Chapter One and Two provide a theoretical and historical background to the discussion of the beguine mystical texts. The initial discussion focuses on Derrida, gender and genre, and the counterarguments posited by feminist and gender scholars of the beguines. My aim is to explicate how a focus on genre and gender has shifted from the textual evidence and led scholars away from a philological-oriented close readings, which would connect form, structure and content. The second line of inquiry in the first chapter is the question of text classification and the rediscovery of the medieval mystical texts. The nineteenth-century focus on taxonomical categorization altered the ways in which these texts have been considered, analyzed and approached, as well as the opinion on the content relayed through the choice of genre. When scholars label these mystical texts “visionary literature”, “mystical treatises” or even show the relationship to hagiography, these structural categories deny acknowledgement of all present text forms and their variations. The result is the inclination to “fit” the beguine mystical texts into an overarching genre type (such as “visionary literature”), which may or may not represent the function of the genre within the text as part of a larger dogmatic program or system. For example, Hadewijch of Brabant wrote four groupings of works, organized by genre, that depict not only her visionary experiences, but also explanations of spirituality and imitatio Christi (the imitation of Christ) within the larger discourse of salvation, suffering and a desired perfect union with divinity. Despite the fact that these writings are grouped together as a single corpus, many scholars focus on one genre group, prompting questions regarding the ways in which an individual or separate generic reading of these genres has upon a broader understanding of that genre’s function within the scope of Hadewijch’s entire corpus./nI argue that the question of genre is not one that can be answered with single generic categories and that the variations present in these mystic texts exists to promote and support didactic motivations running like an undercurrent beneath all of the mystics’ writings. In the end, the emphasis on genre categorization is not the method that should be implemented in the close readings of Hadewijch’s, Mechthild’s and Agnes’ works. I posit that the motivation behind the composition of the beguine mystical texts is the unifying factor that allows the reader and scholar to approach these works as a tradition. We find variation in the methodology and form used to convey their messages to the reader, from courtly lyric forms depicting the conflicting emotions of the mystical spiritual process to mnemonic landscapes organizing and mentally revisiting visionary experiences. My hope with this study is to place these beguine mystical texts within the same niveau as other religio-philosophical writings of the late Middle Ages and base my claim upon the premise that these female authors mastered the predominant didactic forms that prevailed in the twelfth through fourteenth centuries and, through their own innovation, carried new literary forms into the fold of didactic literature.

Advisor: Largier, Niklaus