The Place of Mysticism in the Late Middle Ages

Abstract

What would it mean to place late medieval mysticism back in its context? Theologia mystica suggests a movement away from material life and into an otherworldly relationship to the divine. My dissertation, The Place of Mysticism in the Late Middle Ages, analyzes the writings of three mystics (Julian of Norwich, Marguerite Porete, and Jan van Ruusbroec), considering them in light of then-contemporary socio-political circumstances and placing these works back within the specific conditions that gave rise to their initial drafting. This project argues that images and figurations from these texts are best understood as extensions of local, socially salient places, events, and discourses. Even as this study offers concrete and particular readings of mystical works, it also contends that mysticism in northwestern Europe in the long fourteenth century provided a discursive means to consider and refigure questions of sovereignty. In taking this approach, it seeks a balance between narrowly historicist and merely theological or intellectual-historical modes of criticism. Seen in this light, my dissertation expands our understanding of late medieval mystical theology in both concrete and abstract terms; it offers a novel framework for analyzing and interrogating the relationship between mystical theology and political theory—two disciplines too often viewed separately.