Elizabeth A. Andersen, The Voices of Mechthild of Magdeburg

Medium Aevum, Fall, 2002 by Bettina Bildhauer

(Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2000). 255 pp. ISBN 3-906765-60-1. 26.00 [pounds sterling].

Mechthild von Magdeburg's thirteenth-century mystical text Das fliessende Licht der Gottheit is, in a new edition and translation, increasingly being studied by English-speaking academics and students. Elizabeth Andersen thus fills an emerging gap in the market with this first general English-language introduction to the text. Addressing newcomers to the Fliessendes Licht and writing as a literary critic rather than as a theologian or historian, Andersen begins by sketching the works of other twelfth- and thirteenth-century German religious women and the `vernacular theology' of other female European mystics, a literary context to which the Fliessendes Licht is both indebted and from which it departs.

The first chapter outlines Mechthild's supposed life as a beguine and later as a nun. Andersen provides plenty of detailed socio-historical background information, primarily on the beguine movement. She here draws on a variety of secondary sources, including lesser-known doctoral dissertations.

Turning to the Fliessendes Licht itself, Andersen then argues for the integral unity of the text, which has been doubted by older scholarship. Using some Bakhtinian terminology, she succeeds in making the text's loose structure and its dialogicity, its constant relation of exchanges of the narrator with God as well as with her contemporaries, appear as strengths with our postmodern penchant for plurality. Three features guaranteeing the Fliessendes Licht's coherence are discussed here and in the remaining chapters: the persona of the author, the literary models of the Psalter and the Song of Songs, and the all-encompassing time scheme. The second chapter traces in detail the roles and self-characterizations of the author/narrator-figure throughout the text (without actually employing narratological terms). It also covers the existing knowledge of the manuscripts' evolution, transmission, edition, and reception, and their effects on the narrator's self-representation.

Chapter iii consists of new research on the hitherto neglected influence of the Psalter and also the Song of Songs on the Fliessendes Licht. Andersen shows how the biblical texts' classification as `books', their use of dialogue, their theological and narrative stances, and especially the roles of their speakers as mystics and prophets are echoed in the Fliessendes Licht.

In her fourth and last chapter, Andersen describes the treatment of time in the Fliessendes Licht. In visions and mystical unions, the linear time of the narrator's biography merges with salvation history as well as with the eternity or timelessness of God, as Anderson shows in detailed analyses of the use of time and tense in a number of chapters.

Andersen's book thus combines a wealth of introductory material with a significant proportion of original research. While an interesting approach, this sometimes leads to a slightly uneven structure with an overrepresentation of certain literary models (Psalter and Song of Songs) or stylistic features (tense). This book would benefit immensely from some thorough editing, which could help not only to implement a more stringent and accessible structure, but also to avoid the sloppy layout, numerous typographical errors, lack of consistency for references (as regards the quotation of originals, abbreviation of names and numbers, capitalization, and publishing details), and a number of minor factual inaccuracies (pp. 13, 95, 171). But in any case, a project as ambitious as this will prove a useful resource for students as well as more experienced scholars.

BETTINA BILDHAUER

Cambridge