Mystical Theology: Contemporary Approaches - Paperback

by Rachel Smith (Author)

What are the contemporary afterlives of the medieval mystical tradition? How do its searching questions about subjectivity, language, time, sex, bodies, divine love, and divine absence continue to shape theology, literature, history, Black Studies, psychoanalysis, and gender studies today? This book asks not only how scholars interpret medieval mystical theology, but how turning to premodern insights, practices, and struggles can help articulate urgent contemporary concerns. Offering a thematic overview across disciplines, it traces how contemporary thinkers have received, reimagined, and transformed Christian medieval mystical texts and tropes. It also returns to the medieval sources themselves--to reveal their complexity, open new paths for analysis, and provide essential background for readers newly encountering these traditions.

Author Biography

Rachel J.D. Smith, Ph.D. (2012), Harvard University, is associate professor of Theology and Religious Studies at Villanova University (USA). She has published widely on medieval mystical theology and hagiography, including Excessive Saints: Gender, Narrative and Theological Invention in Thomas of Cantimpré's Mystical Hagiographies (Columbia, 2018).