The Middle English Mystics by Wolfgang Riehle (review)

REVIEWS WOLFGANG RIEHLE, The Middle English Mystics. Translated by Bernard Standring. London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981. Pp. xvi, 244. $32.50. This volume is a translation of the revised work originally published in 1977 as Studien zur englischen Mystik des Mittelalters unter besonderer Berucksichtigung ihrer Metaphorik. It is a balanced and perceptive contri­ bution to the subject ofMiddle English mysticism with its development of a vernacular idiom. While not ignoring earlier homiletic treatises and manuals ofasceticism, Riehleconcentratesupon theuse ofmetaphor inthe Cloud group and in the works of Walter Hilton, Julian of Norwich, Richard Rolle, and Margery Kemp. Riehle's conservative linguistic com­ parisons ofthese English mystics with their German contemporaries is a welcome addition to recent scholarship. Continuing the method ofHope Emily Allen, Riehle's comparative approach focuses upon John Tauler, Meister Eckhart, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Henry Suso, and Rudolf of Biberach. While drawing linguistic parallels, the author is careful to indicate likely areas ofGerman influence while observing the more likely possibility ofcommon Latin sources. Indeed, the English are seen to be much more biblical than their theoretical German counterparts. Much of their language, when not purely biblical, is Augustinian, Victorine, Ber­ nardine, and Franciscan. While not intended as a theological study, Riehle's discussion is theo­ logical in just the right way. In his thorough treatment ofmystical meta­ phor Riehle hints at the appropriateness of this figure of speech to its didactic purpose. Certainly, throughout mystical literature a close analogy operates between the transformation ofthe individual from carnality to spirituality, and the metaphoric movement oflanguage from concrete to abstract.' Metaphor contains within its own nature the transforming of experience from the sensual to the sublime. The value of the "word" correctly interpreted is its reflection of the conjoining of natures in the "Word Incarnate." As John Fleming has shown (An Introduction to the Franciscan Literature ofthe Middle Ages), the parallel was ofparticular importance to Franciscan thought since it links the nature oflanguage with Christ's childhood and Passion-the two foci of the order's effective re­ sponse to Christ's life and the two foci of late Latin and vernacular mysticism. 193 SWDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER Chaucerians have been known, for good or ill, to dip into the volumes of Migne for their understanding of theology and for insight into the signs and symbols of "secular" texts. Of significance for the student of Middle English literature in general are Riehle's occasional mentions ofa relation­ ship between the diction of English mysticism and the vocabulary of Chaucer, Langland, and others. Several times the author takes issue with the MED's omission ofinterpretations ofwords introduced by mystics into the vocabulary ofEnglish prose. That a writer such as Chaucer might have employed such meanings in his poetry could add considerably to our understanding of medieval irony-or of a particular text. Indeed, Riehle discusses mystical prose as if it were poetry (for Rolle it often is) and consistently demonstrates the German tendency to coin new words and the English tendency to give new meanings to old words and Latin borrowings. This metaphoric "incarnation" ofwords has as its basis a pseudo-Dionysian sense of the ineffability of the Divine. Riehle's study of mysticism as popular theology directed to a lay audience indirectly indicates that the mystics might well give the modern reader a more immediate and lin­ guistically valid insight into the fourteenth-century "secular" use oftheol­ ogy than can be provided by patristic texts and the language ofthe schools. To see mysticism in this light is to illuminate our concepts ofpilgrimage, the operation ofgrace, apocalyptic images, and the Exemplarism ofChrist. Richie's first chapter discusses the public for mystical literature in Eng­ land and reminds the reader ofthe feminine audience and the many wills attesting to both noble and middle-class audiences. Beyond this prologue to the study proper, Riehle (contrary to Evelyn Underhill) suggests the possibility that there were organized lay groups in England with affinities to the Beguines, the Brethren of the Common Life, and the Friends of God. Ifthese groups were in England, the author considers the likelihood of German influence upon English mysticism to be greater than perhaps othershaveassumed. Theprobabilityofinfluenceisthesubjectofchapter 2. Riehle...