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Gender and Medieval Mysticism from India to Europe book cover

1st Edition

Gender and Medieval Mysticism from India to Europe

Edited By Alexandra Verini, Abir Bazaz Copyright 2024
254 Pages 2 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

254 Pages 2 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

254 Pages 2 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge
Also available as eBook on:
This book opens up a dialogue between pre-modern women identified as mystics in diverse locations from South Asia to Europe. It considers how women from the disparate religious traditions of Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity expressed devotion in parallel ways. The argument is that women’s mysticism demands to be compared not because of any essential "female" experience of the divine but because... Read more

1 Introduction

Alexandra Verini

Part I Mysticism as Resistance

2 Weeping as Resistance in Islamic and Christian Contemplative Hagiography

Ayoush Lazikani

3 Mysticism between Women in Early Medieval England

Kathryn Maude

4 Public Scandal and Mystical Marriage: Margery Kempe and Mīrābaī

Katherine Zieman

Part II Reimagining the Female Mystic

5 Tongue Untied: Women and Forbidden Speech in Medieval India

Subhashree Chakravarty

6 Enclosed Life and Mystical Form in the Ancrene Wisse

Aparna Chaudhuri

7 Gender Fluidity in Sìrīvaisònòava Theology: The Status of the Cowherd Women

Manasicha Akepiyapornchai

Part III Shaping Mystical Femininity

8 The Discipline of Mahadevi and Lalla: Religious Ambiguity in the Gendering of Ascetic Female Hindu Saints

Dean Accardi

9 Imagined femininity in Sant Mysticism

Galina Rousseva-Sokolova

10 Invoking Mirabai: Elision and Illumination in the Global Study of Women Mystics

Nancy Martin

Part IV Women Mystics Across Time

11 Swaying in the Presence of the Saints: Women's Mediation of Spiritual Authority in the Sidi Sufi Devotional Tradition of Gujarat

Jazmin Graves

12 Love Knows no Bounds: Contemporary Artist Engagement with Marguerite Porete and Hadewijch

Louise Nelstrop

13 Afterword

Liz Herbert McAvoy

Biography

Alexandra Verini is an Assistant Professor of English at Ashoka University.

Abir Bazaz is an Assistant Professor of English at Ashoka University.

"This is an impressive, reflective volume of diverse essays that help to understand a historical pattern between 700 and 1500 CE, as women increasingly confronted gender norms by asserting religious/spiritual authority—often referred to or translated as ‘mysticism’. By strategically limiting the scope to South Asia and Europe, the contributors present a manageable set of examples that can be brought into meaningful conversation, thereby joining in the growing current of critical comparison in religious studies. We find here careful analyses of detail-rich local cases, reflections on provincialities of key terms (especially ‘mysticism’), and considerations of transregional and long-term relationships between gender and appeals to religion/spirituality to construct the world differently. Highly recommended for anyone interested in understanding women and gender in the premodern world, mysticism as a social force, cross-cultural translation, and the critically comparative study of religion." – Jon Keune, Michigan State University, USA

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