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  • Women and the Divine in Literature Before 1700: Essays in Memory of Margot Louis
  • Nancy Bradley Warren
Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, ed. Women and the Divine in Literature Before 1700: Essays in Memory of Margot Louis. Victoria: ELS Editions, 2010. Pp. xi, 279. $30.00 paper.

Although I did not have the privilege of knowing Margot Louis, the contributors to this collection of essays present her as a woman of keen intellect, wide learning, and great pedagogical skill. This volume is therefore a fitting memorial, because every contribution is of exceptional quality and the territory the essays cover is large indeed. In spite of this wide scope, the essays speak intelligently to one another and the collection coheres quite well.

In her introductory essay, Kathryn Kerby-Fulton tackles two “interconnected problems” central to studying medieval female spirituality: the problem of male scribal filtering of female religious experience, and the problem of understanding how medieval people felt about visionary experiences. She makes a compelling case for the complexity of medieval attitudes toward visionary experiences. Because of the seriousness with which visions and their probatio were taken, male scribes relating the lives of visionary women faced daunting choices. Kerby-Fulton analyzes ways in which male scribes accordingly muted the voices of Saint Perpetua and Christina of Markyate to overcome doubts about visions. In contrast, she argues that the Benedictine and English Cardinal Adam Easton, who wrote the Defensorium Sanctae Birgittae for Saint Birgitta's canonization process, sees the saint's visions as “theological problems to be solved” (15), and he finds the solutions in scholastic philosophy. [End Page 353]

In her contribution, Linda Olson first examines the portrayal of Monica in Saint Augustine's own writings, noting that “the mother he presents is not perfect” (21). Olson then turns to medieval writers’ and artists’ representations of Monica. She considers the interest in Monica's weeping and prayers for her son, and she discusses the frequency of Monica's appearance in the visual tradition associated with Augustinian hermit friars. She also examines visual depictions of Monica's prophetic dream as well as textual treatments of Monica that emphasize her wisdom and ability to interpret this revelation.

Thea Todd also concerns herself with the ways in which a holy woman is presented textually. She argues that the anonymous St. Albans monk who wrote or redacted Christina of Markyate's Life interpreted Christina's struggles with her family concerning her marriage and her private vow of virginity (events that occurred between about 1115 and 1118) in light of “much later developments of ecclesiastical thought on marriage” (49). Christina's Life was composed during the 1140s, and Todd argues that Gratian's Decretum, produced around the same time, established ecclesiastical views on the necessity of the woman's consent in marriage, and on ecclesiastical control of marriage, that shape the Life’s presentation of these key events in Christina's career as a holy woman.

Julianne Bruneau's contribution centers on a fascinating, sophisticated close reading of Alan of Lille's wordplay in De planctu naturae. In particular, she focuses on the poem's well-known concerns with sexual deviations and grammatical errors. Bruneau argues that “linguistic and sexual intercourse are of equal importance to the literal and metaphorical work of the text and reflect multiple aims” (66). Alan's wordplay is a vehicle for wrestling with the “problem of marrying truth and expression” (83) and it is in a sense performative, since De planctu demonstrates the “use of poetry to express philosophy” (66).

Adrienne Williams Boyarin also considers, in a sense, the work that words do and the ways in which they do it. Her essay treats the motif of feminine flesh as text in the life of Saint Margaret that composes part of the Katherine Group. She argues that Saint Margaret's body in this version of her life is neither wholly physical nor entirely spiritual. Instead, “it sits somewhere in between, as a textual body” (87). In particular, Saint Margaret's body becomes first a legal text authorized by Christ, then a book, and finally a relic. These categories, though, are not fully stable; the boundaries demarcating them are porous.

Maidie Hilmo...

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