Promised Bodies

Reviews / Votes

Promised Bodies is a contribution at once to the study of medieval Christian mystical theology and to that of medieval women's religious writing. These two fields are adjacent and have been in dialogue for more than a century, yet they have never engaged with the intellectual energy that Patricia Dailey brings to bear on them here. -- Nicholas Watson, Harvard University Both learned and delightful, both sweeping and precise, Promised Bodies sets a new standard for the study of the mystical tradition in the Western Middle Ages. Reading across linguistic, temporal, and institutional boundaries, Patricia Dailey provides a compelling new perspective on the eternally perplexing nature of embodiment and its formal incarnation in writing. -- Bruce Holsinger, University of Virginia Patricia Dailey's Promised Bodies is a truly remarkable study that will transform the way we read and teach medieval mystical texts. Analyzing the thirteenth-century Middle Dutch writings of the gifted mystic Hadewijch and placing her writings in the context of Pauline and Augustinian conceptions of the body as a "twofold entity" of considerable complexity and their medieval reception, it works out the problem of the body in mystical writing that has plagued literary scholars since they first took on such texts as objects of study in the mid-twentieth century. Integrating her deep knowledge of medieval theology and philosophy, Dailey not only explains why the use of bodily metaphors in the description of mystical experience can be so perplexing, she also makes sense of them. In so doing, she offers us a new means of reading women's mysticism that allows us to appreciate the sophistication of these texts without compartmentalizing them as "merely" somatic and irrational and therefore feminine and incidental. -- Sara Poor, Princeton University Excellent and very full of notes. Choice This work of historical theology will be essential for libraries, graduate students, and scholars of medieval theology in general and of women's mysticism in particular, along with all those interested in the question of embodiment and the relationship between theology and poetics. Horizons An insightful and profound reading of medieval women mystics... Dailey's work is highly recommended for graduate students and scholars of medieval theology and mysticism, as well as scholars of religious literature. Religious Studies Review Represents an important and fresh addition to the debate surrounding gender and the religious literature written by women. Ons Geestelijk Erf Dailey presents a bold new approach to the study of medieval women's mystical literature. -- Jessica A. Boon Modern Philology Dailey's work will now be indispensable for anyone who wants to understand this most elusive of mystics, or to think in a more sophisticated way about mystical bodies. Church History