Mechthild of Magdeburg and Her Book Gender and the Making of
Textual Authority Sara S. Poor Winner of the 2006 First Book Prize
of the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship Winner of the 2008
John Nicholas Brown Prize from the Medieval Academy of America
"Authoritative, convincing, well argued."--"Choice" "Everyone who
is genuinely interested in problems of women's writing,
vernacularity, and the construction of textual authority will have
much to learn from this book."--Barbara Newman, Northwestern
University "Poor has not only contributed to our knowledge of
Mechthild and the textual history of her work but provided an
ambitious model for how to engage with a medieval text, its author,
its reception by disparate readers, and its perception by modern
scholars."--"The Medieval Review" Poor's astute examination of
Mechthild's authorship and the historical transmission of her text
contributes significantly not only to the fields of feminist
medieval scholarship but also demonstrates how a medieval text can
more broadly engage in the construction of religious,
philosophical, and literary traditions across time."--"Medieval
Feminist Forum" "This remarkable book, a kind of textual biography,
is the product of meticulous research and is an astute reflection
on the paradoxes of textual authority in mystical texts."--"Journal
of Religion" Sometime around 1230, a young woman left her family
and traveled to the German city of Magdeburg to devote herself to
worship and religious contemplation. Rather than living in a
community of holy women, she chose isolation, claiming that this
life would bring her closer to God. Even in her lifetime, Mechthild
of Magdeburg gained some renown for her extraordinary book of
mystical revelations, "The Flowing Light of the Godhead," the first
such work in the German vernacular. Yet her writings dropped into
obscurity after her death, many assume because of her gender. In
"Mechthild of Magdeburg and Her Book," Sara S. Poor seeks to
explain this fate by considering Mechthild's own view of female
authorship, the significance of her choice to write in the
vernacular, and the continued, if submerged, presence of her
writings in a variety of contexts from the thirteenth through the
nineteenth century. Rather than explaining Mechthild's absence from
literary canons, Poor's close examination of medieval and early
modern religious literature and of contemporary scholarly writing
reveals her subject's shifting importance in a number of
differently defined traditions, high and low, Latin and vernacular,
male- and female-centered. While gender is often a significant
factor in this history, Poor demonstrates that it is rarely the
only one. Her book thus corrects late twentieth-century arguments
about women writers and canon reform that often rest on inadequate
notions of exclusion. "Mechthild of Magdeburg and Her Book" offers
new insights into medieval vernacular mysticism, late medieval
women's roles in the production of culture, and the construction of
modern literary traditions. Sara S. Poor teaches German at
Princeton University and is coeditor of "Women and Medieval Epic."
The Middle Ages Series 2004 352 pages 6 x 9 ISBN 978-0-8122-3802-0
Cloth $69.95s 45.50 ISBN 978-0-8122-0328-8 Ebook $69.95s 45.50
World Rights Literature, Women's/Gender Studies
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