Body and Soul Essays on Medieval Women and Mysticism [Paperback]

I. Backgrounds
1. Women and Mysticism in the Medieval World
2. Unmasking Women: Medieval Responses to the Unknowability of the Lady
3. A New Feminine Spirituality: The Beguines and Their Writings in Medieval Europe
4. A Medieval Woman's Utopian Vision: The Rule of St. Clare of Assisi
II. The Tradition of Holy Women: Change and Continuity
5. Eloquence and Heroic Virginity in Hrotsvit's Verse Legends
6. Transforming the World: The Serpent-Dragon and the Virgin Saint
7. She Seemed to Have Come from the Desert : Italian Women Saints and the Vitae Patrum Cycle
III. Women Mystics and the Acquisition of Authority
8. Male Confessors and Female Penitents: Possibilities for Dialogue
9. The Rhetoric of Transgression in the Lives of Italian Women Saints
10. Gender, Knowledge, and Power in Hadewijch Strophische Gedichten
11. Writing the Body: Male and Female in the Writings of Marguerite d'Oingt, Angela of Foligno, and Umilta of Faenza
Index

[T]he strength of this volume lies in its close readings....The author has carefully marshalled evidence for claims that have been made elsewhere, less persuasively, in the abstract. Her essays are prefaced by three introductory chapters which, together with her clear and unpretentious style, should make her book accessible to undergraduates without sacrificing its value to scholars....A valuable and very readable collection, proving that the new scholarship on medieval religious women has now reached full maturity. --Barbara Newman,Northwestern University, inThe Journal of Religion

Fills a void--the sprightly and mothering spirituality of our medieval women mystics recovers an essential component of love in the Western World. --John Glanville,San Francisco State University

This collection of essays furthers our understanding of female saints in their historical context and an aplÃ*