Women mystics confront the modern world : Marie de l'Incarnation (1599-1672) and Madame Guyon (1648-1717) / Marie-Florine Bruneau.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bruneau, Marie-Florine.

Series:

SUNY series in Western esoteric traditions

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Marie de l'Incarnation, mère, Saint, 1599-1672.

Marie de l'Incarnation.

Guyon, Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte, 1648-1717.

Guyon, Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte.

Mysticism--History--17th century.

Mysticism.

Women mystics--Biography.

Women mystics.

History.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

x, 279 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Albany : State University of New York Press, [1998]

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Chapter 1. Female Mysticism: A Historical Perspective 15

Part 1 Marie de l'Incarnation

Chapter 2. The Female Mystical Body in Transition: From the Rhetoric of Suffering to the Rhetoric of Health 37

Chapter 3. From France to Canada/From Motherhood to Subjecthood: Mystical Writing as Distancing 57

Chapter 4. The Double Bind

The Invisible Historical Subject as Historiographer 77

Chapter 5. The Confrontation between "Civilized" and "Savage" Femininity in the New World 101

Part 2 Madame Guyon

Chapter 6. A Figure of Transition: Madame Guyon between the Female Mystical Tradition and the Emergence of a New Era 135

Chapter 7. The Quarrel of Quietism and the Construction of Modern Femininity 167

Chapter 8. Guyon's Autobiography at the Crossroads of History 197.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 265-274) and index.

ISBN:

0791436616

0791436624

OCLC:

36900852