the mystical theology of valentin weigel - DataSpace at Princeton ...

with fragments of Eckhart and Tauler sermons. (This last statement does not apply to the
relationship between Dionysius and Weigel.)
Sara Poor’s study of the complex reception of Mechthild of Magdeburg’s book
Der fliessende Licht der Gottheit has served as an important methodological model for
this dissertation, even though the body of texts addressed differs greatly. 49 Addressing the
issue of the exclusion of women’s writing from the literary and theological canon, and
moreover the double exclusion resulting from the marginalization of pre-modern works
in the modern academy, Poor attends to the afterlife of Mechthild’s book in all its forms:
from a complete text that names Mechthild as the author, to the inclusion of anonymous
excerpts in compilations of devotional texts, to a few remaining traces of Mechthild’s
name and work in printed sources from the early modern era, to Mechthild’s appearance
and positioning in contemporary teaching anthologies and reference works. Taking a
diachronic perspective allows Mechthild to resurface as an author worthy of study, rather
than limiting that status to those who have become greats, if greatness is attributed solely
to those whose name/fame lives on and whose texts survive intact. Moreover, Poor’s
book allows the reader to observe influence across time, and suggests that an author’s
afterlife is rarely simple; the reception of an author is not divided into a true reception
and a false one, and a work may persist without the author’s name or in fragmentary
form. 50 In my opinion, Poor’s approach steers a steady course between the New and Old
Philologies by thematizing the way that Mechthild’s authorship is constructed (by
49 Sara S. Poor, Mechthild of Magdeburg and Her Book: Gender and the Making of Textual Authority
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004).
50 Admittedly from the perspective of the author, as Poor points out, this can be a bad thing as it leads to a
weakening of authorship to the point of her disappearance. Poor, 13.
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