Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-k7p5g Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-10T02:28:47.185Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Writing the Mystic Body: Sexuality and Textuality in the écriture-féminine of Saint Catherine of Genoa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2020

Anna Antonopoulos
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper looks to evolve a discourse about the body in medieval women's mystical experience via an understanding of the life and work of Saint Catherine of Genoa as écriture-féminine. Drawing upon Catherine's resolution of binarism through the articulation of sexuality and textuality, I argue that the female mystic's experience of the body as site of struggle helps move beyond analysis of a binary experience to a politics of speaking the body directly.

Type
Research Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 6 , Issue 3: Special Issue: Feminism and the Body , Fall 1991 , pp. 185 - 207
Copyright
Copyright © 1991 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allen, Prudence. 1987. Soul, body and transcendence in Teresa of Avila. Toronto Journal of Theology 3(2): 252–66.10.3138/tjt.3.2.252CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Beauvoir, Simone. 1965. The second sex. Parshley, H. M., trans. New York: Bantam.Google Scholar
Bell, Rudolph M. 1985. Holy anorexia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 10.7208/chicago/9780226169743.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bordo, Susan R. 1988. Anorexia nervosa: Psychopathology as the crystallization of culture. In Feminism and Foucault: Reflections on resistance. Diamond, Irene and Quinby, Lee, eds. Boston: Northeastern University Press.Google Scholar
Bordo, Susan R. 1989. The body and the representation of femininity: A feminist appropriation of Foucault. In Gender/body/knowledge: Feminist reconstructions of being and knowing. Bordo, Susan and Jaggar, Allison, eds. New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Bordo, Susan R. 1990a. Feminism, postmodernism, and gender‐scepticism. In Feminism/postmodernism. Nicholson, Linda J., ed. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bordo, Susan R. 1990b. Reading the slender body. In Body/politics: Women and the discourses of science. Jacobus, Mary, Fox Keller, Evelyn, and Shuttleworth, Sally, eds. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bordo, Susan R. and Jaggar, Alison, eds. 1989. Gender/body/knowledge: Feminist reconstructions of being and knowing. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Bynum, Caroline Walker. 1987. Holy feast and holy fast: The religious significance of food to medieval women. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Bynum, Caroline Walker. 1990. Fragmentation and redemption: Essays on gender and the human body in medieval religion. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Catherine of Genoa Saint. 1962. Vita. In Edizione critica dei manoscritti cateriniani, S. Caterina Fieschi Adorno. Vol. 2. Bonze da Genova, Umile, ed. Turin: Marietti.Google Scholar
Catherine of Genoa Saint. 1979. Purgatory and purgation; The spiritual dialogue. Hughes, Serge, trans. New York: Paulist Press.Google Scholar
Cixous, Hélène and Clément, Catherine. 1988. The newly bom woman. Wing, Betsy, trans. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Clark, Elizabeth, and Richardson, Herbert. 1977. Women and religion: A feminist sourcebook of Christian thought. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Dallery, Arleen B. 1989. The politics of writing the body: Écriture'féminine. In Gender/body/knowledge: Feminist reconstructions of being and knowing. Bordo, Susan and Jaggar, Alison, eds. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Daly, Mary. 1984. Pure lust: Elemental feminist philosophy. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1980. The history of sexuality. Vol. 1, An Introduction. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1986. The use of pleasure. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Gallop, Jane. 1983. Quand nos lèvres s'écrivent: Irigaray's body politic. Romantic Review 74: 77–83.Google Scholar
Gallop, Jane. 1988. Lip service. In Thinking through the body. New York: Columbia University Press. 10.7312/gall94366CrossRefGoogle Scholar
von Hügel, Friedrich Freiherr. 1908. The mystical element of religion as studied in Saint Catherine of Genoa and her friends. New York: E. P. Dutton.Google Scholar
Irigaray, Luce. 1981. This sex which is not one. C. Reeder, trans. New French feminisms: An anthology. Marks, Elaine and de Courtivron, Isabelle, eds. New York: Schocken.Google Scholar
Irigaray, Luce. 1985a. La mystèrique. In Speculum of the other woman. Gill, Gillian C., trans. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Irigaray, Luce. 1985b. This sex which is not one. Porter, C., trans. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Jacobus, Mary. 1990. In parenthesis: Immaculate conceptions and female desire.” In Body/politics: Women and the discourses of science. Jacobus, Mary, Fox Keller, Evelyn, and Shuttleworth, Sally, eds. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Jacobus, Mary, Fox Keller, Evelyn, and Shuttleworth, Sally, eds. 1990. Body/politics: Women and the discourses of science. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
John of the Cross Saint. 1962. The living flame of love. Allison Peers, E., trans. New York: Doubleday.Google Scholar
Lacan, Jacques. 1982. God and the jouissance of woman.” In Feminine sexuality: Jacques Lacan and the école freudienne. Mitchell, Juliet and Rose, Jacqueline, eds. London: Macmillan; New York: Norton: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
Laqueur, Thomas. 1986. Orgasm, generation, and the politics of reproductive biology. Representations 14: 1.10.1525/rep.1986.14.1.99p0120hCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lloyd, Genevieve. 1984. The man of reason: “Male” and “female” in Western philosophy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Moi, Toril. 1985. Sexual/textual politics: Feminist literary theory. London and New York: Methuen.Google Scholar
Nugent, D.C. 1984. The annihilation of St. Catherine of Genoa. Mystics Quarterly 10, 4 (Dec): 182–88.Google Scholar
Suleiman, Susan. 1986. (Re)Writing the body: The politics and poetics of female eroticism. In The female body in Western culture. Suleiman, Susan, ed. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Turner, Bryan S. 1984. The Body and society: Explorations in social theory. New York: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar