Description
Book SynopsisIn essays on topics ranging from Teresa of Avila''s sixteenth-century mysticism to the politicized spirituality of postmodern women writers, the contributors to Things of the Spirit chronicle the development of women''s spiritual writing as a context for defining, challenging, and changing women''s experiences in the world. They explore the nature of the sacred and women''s relationship to the sacred in the writings of women poets, diarists, autobiographers, and fiction writers.
Kristina Groover contends that identifying and analyzing women''s spiritual writing relies on redefining the sacred hierarchical structures that dominate the Christian tradition by allowing for spiritualities that are heterogeneous and pluralistic, embracing some aspects of religious tradition while rejecting others, locating the sacred in the material world, emphasizing the sacredness of community, and representing the female body as a site of the sacred.
Groover argues that efforts to
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“Kristina Groover's collection of essays on women spiritual writers, Things of the Spirit, uncovers a rich vein of lesser known women mystics or women writers who have not previously been read as spiritual writers. This volume discloses a new way of looking at spiritual experience and writing from a women's perspective.” —Rosemary Radford Ruether, Carpenter Professor of Feminist Theology, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, CA
“Accessible to the general reader, this volume offers a diverse selection of women's writing centered on spirituality.” —Emily Dickinson International Society Bulletin
“The strength of the collection is that it chronologically demonstrates how women over time, in various contexts, have tested the limits of religious language, expanded and embodied the sacred.” —North Dakota Quarterly
"These 13 essays by women scholars 'chronicle the development of women's spiritual writing as a context fo defining, challenging, and changing women's experiences in the world. They explore the nature of the sacred and women's relationship to the sacred in the writings of women poets, diarists, autobiographers, and fiction writers.'" —Theology Digest
". . . both Groover's Introduction to Things of the Spirit and these thirteen feminist-focused essays on women's spirituality provide important insights into the nature of the sacred as seen over many years through the female consciousness." —Christianity and Literature
