Langages mystiques et av�nement de la modernit� by Dominique de Courcelles (review)

Abstract

MLRy ioo.i, 2005 187 the Confessor' (pp. 119-39), tracks changes in the presentation of Edward's virginity through the eleventh- and twelfth-century Latin vitae of Edward. In Alchemy and the Exploration of Late Medieval Sexuality' (pp. 140-66), Jona? than Hughes stresses the centrality of female sexuality, and the interrelationship of reproductive heterosexuality and virginity, in alchemical medicine, and goes on to propose that the hermaphrodite is 'yet another figure of the virgin' (p. 161). Evans examines descriptions of Jewish abuse ofthe Eucharist in 'The Jew,the Host and the Virgin Martyr: Fantasies ofthe Sentient Body' (pp. 167-86) and compares them with the Middle English Seinte Margarete to show that Margaret's body and the Eucharist provide 'a fantasy of wholeness' (p. 169) forthe construction of Christian, as opposed to Jewish, identity. In addressing the question 'Can the Virgin Martyr Speak?' (pp. 187-213), Robert Mills uses postcolonial theory, and in particular its analysis of the immolation of widows, to investigate the tension between victimization and empowerment in nar? ratives about virgin martyrs. Bernau's ' "Saint, Witch, Man, Maid or Whore?": Joan of Are and Writing History' (pp. 214-33) interprets the increase in hostility towards Joan and the questioning of her virginity in fifteenth-and sixteenth-century English chronicles as indications of other sorts of uncertainties. Jocelyn Wogan-Browne's summing-up, 'Virginity Now and Then: A Response to Medieval Virginities' (pp. 234-53), draws on her deep knowledge of the field to contextualize and reflect on all of the volume's essays, and closes by offeringa striking, alarming, and entertaining reading of modern medical descriptions of the hymen to demonstrate the continuing centrality of virginity in the construction of identities, and in particular of femininity. One notable characteristic of this volume is its consistent engagement with key methodological and interpretative concerns. All ofthe essays show clear signs of participation in a coherent critical conversation; itis refreshing,and a credit to the editors, to see this degree of conceptual as well as topical coherence in a collection of essays. The range of texts discussed in the essays is wide, and Dor's essay adds a perspec? tive on material culture. This notwithstanding, the volume's title implies a broader scope than it delivers: almost all of the analysis is of later medieval Christian culture, although several of the essays also deal with the blurring of the boundary between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and the deployment in medieval Christendom of ideas about Jewish culture. The volume's later medieval chronological focus happily does not prevent several ofthe essays?in particular those by Salih, Arnold, and Mills?from making important contributions to the refinement of critical methodologies of relevance to the whole of Medieval Studies. University of Leeds Mary Swan Langages mystiques et avenement de la modernite. By Dominique de Courcelles. Paris: Champion. 2003. 322 pp. ISBN 2-7453-0813-0. This book examines concepts of language and expression in the works of seven late medieval and early modern writers: Hadewijch of Antwerp, Ramon Lull, Catherine of Siena, Juan de Valdes, Theresa of Avila, St John of the Cross, and Cervantes. The firstsix form a fairlystraightforward corpus: all wrote in the vernacular, in some cases producing the earliest recorded literary works in their respective languages, and all can be classified as mystics or religious philosophers who struggled to define a lan? guage in which to express intensely personal experiences ofthe divine. Encompassing some four centuries in all?from the early thirteenth-century writings of Hadewijch to those of St John of the Cross, who died in 1591?they provide the material for 188 Reviews a study of mystical expression and religious subjectivity spanning the late medieval and early modern periods. They are furtherunited, if perhaps somewhat tenuously, by a common association with the Iberian peninsula. Four were Iberian by origin; the works of the Flemish Hadewijch and the Italian Catherine were translated into Castilian in the early sixteenth century. Given the neat and cohesive nature of the book's first seven chapters, then, the reader might understandably be surprised to encounter, in the final chapter, Miguel de Cervantes: Iberian to be sure, but hardly an...