Embodying the Sacred: Women Mystics in Seventeenth-Century Lima By N. E. van Deusen (2018)

Embodying the Sacred: Women Mystics in Seventeenth-Century Lima By N. E. van Deusen (2018) Durham and London: Duke University Press, viii + 272pp.

Ciało mistyczne

This article proposes to include in the literary studies the body of texts written by the Christian female mystics, whose accounts have so far been the domain of theological discourse. The perspective offered here focuses on the bodily categories contained in the works of women mystics from the 19th and 20th c. such as: Leonia Nastał, Faustyna Kowalska, Zofia Nosko, Roberta Babiak, Rozalia Celakówna, all of whom qualify under the category of experiential or affective mysticism. The present articles focuses on two notions, i.e. on the one hand, the typology of describing the bodily experience in the mystical text, and on the other, the biographical features. The latter opens up a path towards the anthropological and cultural dimension in the analysis of mystical writings with a particular focus on the issue of illness, self-mortification and exhumation.