Communicative Strategies by Medieval Mystics: The Cases of Mechthild of Magdeburg, Angela of Foligno, and Margery Kempe
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
Abstract
The literary discourse has always served as a medium to explore the various venues for human communication. Most of the people do not face any significant problems with communication in their ordinary, daily lives, but many human conflicts are, after all, the result of miscommunication. Those problems are commonly discussed in fictional narratives, which thus emerge as critically important media for theoretical reflections on human communication, depending on the specific contexts. Most difficult proves to be the communication with the divine, the Godhead, spirits, or other non-material entities. To explore this issue, this paper turns to the genuinely challenging literary discourse, mysticism, generally dominated by female voices from the late Middle Ages and, in some cases, the early modern age. Examining late medieval women’s narratives about their visions and revelations, we are empowered to recognize not only female modes of communication but also women’s special abilities to reach out to the other dimension or respond to Godhead’s calls to engage with Him/It/Her.
Downloads
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
How to Cite
References
Amsler, Mark. 2021. The Medieval Life of Language: Grammar and Pragmatics from Bacon to Kempe. Knowledge Communities. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Andersen, Elizabeth A. 2000. The Voices of Mechthild of Magdeburg. Oxford, Bern, et al.: Peter Lang.
Andreoli, Sergio. 2008. Angela da Foligno alter Franciscus: 1309-2009, VII centenario della morte. Rome: Franciscanum.
Arnold, John H. and Katherine Lewis, ed. 2004. A Companion to The Book of Margery Kempe. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer.
Aronoff, Mark and Janie Rees-Miller, ed. 2001. The Handbook of Linguistics. Blackwell Handbooks in Linguistics. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
Benedetti, Giovanni. 2009. La teologia spirituale di Angela da Foligno. La mistica cristiana tra Oriente e Occidente, 10. Florence: SISMEL Ed. del Galluzzo.
Caciola, Nancy. 2006. Discerning Spirits: Divine and Demonic Possession in the Middle Ages. Conjunctions of Religion & Power in the Medieval Past. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Classen, Albrecht. 2022. “Introduction: An Essay on Language, Culture, and Identity: Medieval and Early Modern Perspectives on an Approaches to Communication, Translation, and Community.” Communication, Translation, and Community in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period: New Cultural-Historical and Literary Perspectives, ed. Albrecht Classen. Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture, 26. Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 1–93.
Classen, Albrecht. 2020a. “Mechthild von Magdeburg,” Literary Encyclopedia, online at: https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5549.
Classen, Albrecht. 2020b. “In Defiance of the Pandemic – The Poetic Word. Yes, I Mean Poetry, Now!,” Rupkatha: Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities 12.5; online at: http://rupkatha.com/rioc1s0n3/.
Classen, Albrecht. 2010a. “Communication in the Middle Ages.” Handbook of Medieval Studies: Terms – Methods – Trends, ed. Albrecht Classen. Vol. 1. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 330–43.
Classen, Albrecht. 2010b. “The Dialectics of Mystical Love in the Middle Ages: Violence/Pain and Divine Love in the Mystical Visions of Mechthild of Magdeburg and Marguerite Porète,” Studies in Spirituality 20: 143–60.
Classen, Albrecht. 2002. Verzweiflung und Hoffnung. Die Suche nach der kommunikativen Gemeinschaft in der deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters. Beihefte zur Mediaevistik, 1 (Frankfurt a. M., Berlin, et al.: Peter Lang.
Dancygier, Barbara, ed. 2017. The Cambridge Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dinzelbacher, Peter. 2012. Deutsche und niederländische Mystik des Mittelalters. Ein Studienbuch. Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter.
Dinzelbacher, Peter, ed. 1989. Wörterbuch der Mystik. Kröners Taschenausgabe, 456. Stuttgart: Alfred Kröner.
Eming, Jutta and Daniela Fuhrmann, ed. 2021. Der Teufel und seine poietische Macht in literarischen Texten vom Mittelalter zur Moderne. Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter.
Fanous, Samuel and Vincent Gillespie, ed. 2011. The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Mysticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Glück, Helmut, ed. 1993. Metzler Lexikon Sprache. Stuttgart and Weimar: Verlag J. B. Metzler.
Hahn, Michael and Pablo Acosta-García, ed. Forthcoming. A Companion to Angela of Foligno. Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition. Leiden and Boston: Brill.
Harte, Jeremy. 2024. Fairy Encounters in Medieval England: Landscape, Folklore and the Supernatural. Exeter New Approaches to Legend, Folklore and Popular Belief. Exeter: University of Exeter Press.
Hollywood, Amy. 1995. The Soul as Virgin Wife: Mechthild of Magdeburg, Marguerite Porete, and Meister Eckhart. Studies in Spirituality and Theology. Notre Dame, IN, and London: University of Notre Dame Press.
Kalas, Laura and Laura Varnam, ed. 2021. Encountering The Book of Margery Kempe. Manchester Medieval Literature and Culture. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Lachance, Paul, trans. 1993. Angela of Foligno. Complete Works. New York and Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press.
Magee, Glenn Alexander, ed. 2016. The Cambridge Handbook of Western Mysticism and Esotericism. New York: Cambridge University Press.
McGinn, Bernard, ed. 1994. Meister Eckhart and the Beguine Mystics: Hadewijch of Brabant, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and Marguerite Porete. New York: Continuum.
McGinn, Bernard. 1988–1998. The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism (1200-1350). 5 vols. New York: Crossroad.
Menestò, Enrico, ed. 2009. Il «Liber» della beata Angela da Foligno. Edizione in fac similie e trascrizione del ms. 342 della Biblioteca Comunale di Assisi, con quattro studi, vol. 2. Uomini e mondi medievali, 18. Spoleto: Fondazione Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo.
Moser, Hugo and Helmut Tervooren, ed. 1988. Des Minnesangs Frühling. 38th rev. ed. Stuttgart: S. Hirzel.
Poor, Sara S. 2004. Mechthild of Magdeburg and Her Book: Gender and the Making of Textual Authority. The Middle Ages Series. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Mechthild of Magdeburg. 1998. The Flowing Light of the Godhead. Trans. and intro. by Frank Tobin. New York and Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press.
Rings, Guido and Sebastian M. Rasinger, ed. 2023. The Cambridge Introduction to Intercultural Communication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Roos, Keith L. 1972. The devil in 16th Century German Literature: The Teufelsbuecher. Bern, Frankfurt a. M.: Herbert Lang.
Rudwin, Maximilian. 1973. The Devil in Legend and Literature. La Salle: IL: Open Court Publ.
Ruh, Kurt. 1993. Frauenmystik und Franziskanische Mystik der Frühzeit. Geschichte der abendländischen Mystik, 2. Munich: C. H. Beck (this is a set of 5 vols., published 1990–1990).
Ruys, Juanita Feros. 2017. Demons in the Middle Ages. Kalamazoo, MI: Arc Humanities Press.
Sell, Roger D., ed. 2013. The Ethics of Literary Communication: Genuineness, Directness, Indirectness. Dialogue Studies, 14. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Spitz, Herman H. 1997. Nonconscious Movements: From Mystical Messages to Facilitated Communication. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Tobin, Frank. 1995. Mechthild von Magdeburg: A Medieval Mystic in Modern Eyes. Columbus, SC: Camden House.
Vollmann-Profe, Gisela, ed. 1990 and 1993. Mechthild von Magdeburg. Das fließende Licht der Gottheit, ed. Hans Neumann. Vol. I: Text. Vol. II: Untersuchungen. Munich: Artemis.
von Moos, Peter, ed. 2008. Zwischen Babel und Pfingsten/Entre Babel et Pentecôte: Sprachdifferenzen und Gesprächsverständigung in der Vormoderne (8.–16. Jahrhundert). Gesellschaft und individuelle Kommunikation in der Vormoderne, 1. Vienna and Berlin: LIT.
Wiethaus, Ulrike. 1996. Ecstatic Transformation: Transpersonal Psychology in the Work of Mechthild of Magdeburg. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.
Windeatt, B. A., trans. 1985. The Book of Margery Kempe. London: Penguin.
Zangari, Mattia. 2019. Tre storie di santità femminile tra parole e immagini: Agiografie, memoriali e fabulae depictae fra Due e Trecento. Orbis Romanicus, 13. Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto Verlag.