RT Article
T1 Inventing a Male Writer in Mechtild of Hackeborn’s Booke of Gostlye Grace
JF Journal of medieval religious cultures
VO 40
IS 2
SP 192
OP 216
A1 Rydel, Courtney E.
LA English
PB Penn State Univ. Press
YR 2014
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1799398048
AB The translator of The Booke of Gostlye Grace, a Middle English translation of Mechtild of Hackeborn’s mystical text, presents his readers with a familiar narrative of how the mystic composed her text with the assistance of a male confessor. In the original Latin Liber Specialis Gratiae, however, two nuns act as scribes for Mechtild, composing the book in secret before permitting her to read and approve the work. The Middle English translator, I argue, deliberately changes the gender and number of nouns and pronouns and highlights this false narrative of a single male scribe in order to make the mystic’s revelations more appealing to a fifteenth-century English audience. This systematic rewriting of the text emphasizes Helfta’s role as a worshiping and reading community, rather than a writing one, with implications for the reception of Mechtild’s visions then and now.
K1 Translation
K1 Middle English women writers
K1 Women mystics
K1 Helfta
K1 Mechthild/Mechtild of Hackeborn