Mechthild of Magdeburg and Her Book: Gender and the Making of Textual Authority. By Sara S. Poor. Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2004. Pp. xvi +333 + 5 ill. $55.

The object of Sara Poor's study is Das fließende Licht der Gottheit, composed between 1250 and 1280 by the German Beguine Mechthild von Magdeburg. Her aim is "to elucidate not only how Mechthild as a female author shaped her book but also how the transmission of the text does or does not constitute Mechthild the author as a function or an effect of the medieval book or the textual tradition it constructs" (p. 10). Mechthild was a mystic, and my reaction to some of Poor's theses and arguments should be construed in the light of my understanding of mystical texts as "an attempt to express a direct consciousness of the presence of God" (I cite Bernard McGinn in the General Introduction to vol. I of The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism [New York: Crossroad, 1991], p. xvi).

Marianne Kalinke
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign