Allegories of Love in Marguerite Porete’s ‘Mirror of Simple Souls’
By (author) Suzanne Kocher
Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls, dating probably to the 1290s, is the oldest known mystical work written in French, and the only surviving medieval text by a woman writer executed as a heretic. This volume analyses its use of interconnected allegories that describe the soul’s approach toward God in terms of human social relationships. These include romantic love between lovers in same-sex and mixed-sex pairs, relations among people of differing social rank such as servants and nobles, and rich and poor engaged in economic transactions such as taxation and gift-giving. Gender, rank, and exchange serve as remarkably versatile allegories for spiritual states. Porete uses comparison as an organizing principle that underlies her supple and creative use of allegory, personification, parables, metaphors, similes, proverbs, and glosses. The theologian invites her audience to cross boundaries among literal and figurative registers of meaning, in ways that are emblematic of the soul’s ultimate leap toward the divine. Porete’s social allegories, the author contends, can provide us with valuable evidence of a medieval thinker’s conceptions of God, gender, language, and human capacity for change.
Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls, dating probably to the 1290s, is the oldest known mystical work written in French, and the only surviving medieval text by a woman writer executed as a heretic. This volume analyses its use of interconnected allegories that describe the soul’s approach toward God in terms of human social relationships. These include romantic love between lovers in same-sex and mixed-sex pairs, relations among people of differing social rank such as servants and nobles, and rich and poor engaged in economic transactions such as taxation and gift-giving. Gender, rank, and exchange serve as remarkably versatile allegories for spiritual states. Porete uses comparison as an organizing principle that underlies her supple and creative use of allegory, personification, parables, metaphors, similes, proverbs, and glosses. The theologian invites her audience to cross boundaries among literal and figurative registers of meaning, in ways that are emblematic of the soul’s ultimate leap toward the divine. Porete’s social allegories, the author contends, can provide us with valuable evidence of a medieval thinker’s conceptions of God, gender, language, and human capacity for change.
- By (author) Suzanne Kocher
Other Titles in this Series
Saints’ Lives for Medieval English Nuns, II
An Edition of the 'Lyves and Dethes' in Cambridge University Library, MS Additional 2604
Volume 32
Sacred Communities, Shared Devotions
Gender, Material Culture, and Monasticism in Late Medieval Germany
Volume 29
Saints’ Lives for Medieval English Nuns, I
A Study of the 'Lyves and Dethes' in Cambridge University Library, MS Additional 2604
Volume 18
Living Saints of the Thirteenth Century
The Lives of Yvette, Anchoress of Huy; Juliana of Cornillon, Author of the Corpus Christi Feast; and Margaret the Lame, Anchoress of Magdeburg
Volume 20
The Sisterbook of Master Geert’s House, Deventer
The Lives and Spirituality of the Sisters, c. 1390-c. 1460
Volume 33
Medieval Women – Texts and Contexts in Late Medieval Britain
Essays in Honour of Felicity Riddy
Volume 3
Mystics, Goddesses, Lovers, and Teachers
Medieval Visions and Their Legacies / Studies in Honour of Barbara Newman
Volume 31
Thomas of Cantimpre
The Collected Saints' Lives: Abbot John of Cantimpre, Christina the Astonishing, Margaret of Ypres, and Lutgard of Aywieres
Volume 19
The Knowing of Woman’s Kind in Childing
A Middle English Version of Material Derived from the Trotula and other Sources
Volume 4
Virgins and Scholars
A Fifteenth-Century Compilation of the Lives of John the Baptist, John the Evangelist, Jerome, and Katherine of Alexandria
Volume 10
Three Women of Liege
A Critical Edition of and Commentary on the Middle English Lives of Elizabeth of Spalbeek, Christina Mirabilis, and Marie d'Oignies
Volume 23
Send me God
The Lives of Ida the Compassionate of Nivelles, Nun of La Ramee, Arnulf, Lay Brother of Villers, and Abundus, Monk of Villers
Volume 6
Saints Edith and Aethelthryth: Princesses, Miracle Workers, and their Late Medieval Audience
The Wilton Chronicle and the Wilton Life of St Aethelthryth
Volume 25
The Manere of Good Lyvyng
A Middle English Translation of Pseudo-Bernard's 'Liber de modo bene vivendi ad sororem'
Volume 30
Similar Books
A Collaborative Tapestry in Honour of Shirley Ann Brown / Une fresque brodée en l’honneur de Shirley Ann Brown
The Bayeux Tapestry Seen by her Colleagues and Friends / La Tapisserie de Bayeux vue par ses collègues et amis
Behind the Scenes of Medieval Roofs
An Overview of the Roofing Systems of Italian Churches
Volume 90
Innovation and Medieval Communities
The Circulation of Ideas and Practices in and out of the Town (1200-1500)
Volume 63
John Dunstaple Reading Boethius
John Dunstaple’s Annotations to Boethius’s “De institutione musica” in the Manuscript Oxford, Corpus Christi College Library, MS 118
Linguistic and Cultural Dynamics in a Frontier Society
New Perspectives on Northeastern Bavaria and Western Bohemia in the Early Middle Ages
Volume 9
Medieval Debates on Foreknowledge: Future Contingents, Prophecy, and Divination
Acts of the XXVII Annual Colloquium of the SIEPM, Trento 12-15 September 2023
Volume 31
Medieval Yeghegis, Armenia
History, Archaeology, Society. Local Multiplicities and Global Connections of a Rural Centre on the Silk Road(s)
Power and Women in Southeast and Central Europe in Late Medieval and Early Modern Period (1300-1600)
Volume 10
The Anglo-Norman Bible’s Books of Kings, a Critical Edition
(BL Royal 1 C III, fols 234r-274v)
Volume 37
The Embodied Court in the Premodern World
Understanding the Physicality, Performativity and Lifecycle of Bodies at Court in Europe and Beyond, 1400-1800
Volume 4
