Gender, Knighthood, and Spiritual Imagination in Henry Suso's Life of the Servant

Twenty-first-century scholarship on the late medieval Dominican mystic Henry Suso has seen a marked interest in gendered explorations of his Vita in the realms of authorship, authority, and social and religious prescriptions. In particular, the position of the nun Elsbeth Stagel, Suso's longtime friend, mentee, and narrative subject in the Vita, has come to the forefront as a site of contestation. Moreover, Suso's portrayal of the monastic life as one of a knightly contest has challenged the meaning and function of his work as a didactic text for women religious, as chivalric themes typically carry certain gendered presuppositions. I argue that, contrary to the interpretation of the Vita as opposed to female emulation of the Servant, a close reading of the work suggests that the Servant not only allowed but encouraged Stagel and, by extension, Dominican nuns in Suso's care, to don the persona of a knight for Christ, thus broadening the spiritual imaginations of his readers beyond traditional gendered conventions

Aesthetics · Art · Catechism · Ethos · Humanities · Interpretation (philosophy) · Literature · Meaning (existential) · Mysticism · Narrative · Persona · Servant · Sociology · Subject (documents) · Theology · Early Modern Women Writers · Gender Studies · History · Medieval European Literature and History · Medieval Literature and History · Philosophy

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  Clarissa W Atkinson, Richard Kieckhefer•The American Historical Review•1985

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