Title: Body and soul : essays on medieval women and mysticism /
Authors: Petroff, Elizabeth.
Publisher: Oxford University Press,
Year: 1994
Subjects: Women mystics Europe.; Mysticism History; Mysticism and literature.; Christian literature History and criticism; Mysticism history; Women history
Abstract: Opening a window onto a long-neglected world of women's experience, this text features eleven essays that examine the writings of medieval women mystics from England, France, Germany, Italy, and the Low Countries, providing close readings of a number of important texts from the viewpoint of different literary theories. Surveying various styles of hagiographical writing, the author offers ground-breaking scholarship on a broad range of topics such as how medieval holy women may have appeared to their contemporaries, medieval antifeminism, comparisons between earlier and later Christian mystical writing, the relationship between male confessors and female penitents in the Middle Ages, and the process by which these extraordinary women produced their work. For courses in religious, medieval, or women's studies, this unique text fills a conspicuous gap in an important and fascinating field of literature.
Contents: Women and mysticism in the medieval world -- Unmasking women: medieval responses to the unknowability of the lady -- A new feminine spirituality: the beguines and their writings in medieval Europe -- A medieval woman's utopian vision: the rule of St. Clare of Assisi -- Eloquence and heroic virginity in Hrotsvit's verse legends -- Transforming the world: the serpent-dragon and the virgin saint -- "She seemed to have come from the desert": Italian women saints and the Vitae Patrum cycle -- Male confessors and female penitents: possibilities for dialogue -- The rhetoric of transgression in the Lives of Italian women saints -- Gender, knowledge, and power in Hadewijch's Strophische Gedichten -- Writing the body: male and female in the writings of Marguerite d'Oingt, Angela of Foligno, and Umilita of Faenza.