Women Mystics Confront the Modern World: Marie de l'Incarnation (1599-1672) and Madame Guyon (1648-1717)
Women Mystics Confront the Modern World situates the female mystical tradition within the context of the epistemological shift which affected religious sentiments and the perception of the self at the dawn of the modern world. Anchored in a comprehensive knowledge of the religious history of seventeenth-century France, this book offers a vivid account of the fascinating lives and work of two exceptional women. Marie de l'Incarnation (1599-1672) and Madame Guyon (1648-1717) continue a literary...
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Women Mystics Confront the Modern World situates the female mystical tradition within the context of the epistemological shift which affected religious sentiments and the perception of the self at the dawn of the modern world. Anchored in a comprehensive knowledge of the religious history of seventeenth-century France, this book offers a vivid account of the fascinating lives and work of two exceptional women. Marie de l'Incarnation (1599-1672) and Madame Guyon (1648-1717) continue a literary and spiritual tradition that had begun in the thirteenth century. Yet, because they were at a crucial point in the history of Western mysticism, when this movement was at once at its apogee and in the first stages of decline, their writings show indications of a changing mentality. These transformations shed light on the social significance of female mysticism in the Western tradition. The opportunities the two women seized or shunned highlight their maneuvering for validation and autonomy. But their choices also highlight many contradictions, compromises, and limits imposed upon their self-expression.At the confluence of French and American scholarship on mysticism, this work joins these two schools of thought by introducing gender as a viable category of inquiry into the one and by tempering the overly-optimistic interpretation of female mysticism of the other. Booknews Through the lives of two women who represent a literary and spiritual tradition which began in the 13th century, Bruneau (French, U. of Southern California) chronicles the female Christian mystical tradition during an epistemological transition period in 17th century France provoked by the emergence of modern science. The writings of de l'Incarnation and Guyon disclose a changing mentality"from the rhetoric of suffering to the rhetoric of health," from total Church authority to a more personal faith: echoes of the Quietist Affair which still resonate in feminist debates over spirituality. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.
\ BooknewsThrough the lives of two women who represent a literary and spiritual tradition which began in the 13th century, Bruneau (French, U. of Southern California) chronicles the female Christian mystical tradition during an epistemological transition period in 17th century France provoked by the emergence of modern science. The writings of de l'Incarnation and Guyon disclose a changing mentality<-->"from the rhetoric of suffering to the rhetoric of health," from total Church authority to a more personal faith: echoes of the Quietist Affair which still resonate in feminist debates over spirituality. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.\ \
