A Companion to Marguerite Porete and The Mirror of Simple Souls

Even with growing popularity in the United States, there existed no English-language scholarly introduction to Marguerite Porete or her sole-surviving work Mirror of Simple Souls until now. The study of Marguerite and her work touches on so many disciplines – from religious and secular histories to theological and literary readings of her book – that the scholarship had often been lost in the divides between the disciplines. Our contributors are chosen from both sides of the Atlantic and from an array of disciplines in order to bridge this geographical and linguistic divide. The interdisciplinary nature of the interest in Marguerite and the Mirror and the implications her book has on medieval scholarship make a collection such as this companion ideal.

Contributors are Marleen Cré, Imke De Gier, Dávid Falvay, Sean Field, Geneviève Hasenohr (with Zan Kocher), Jonathan Juilfs, Zan Kocher, Joanne Robinson, Elizabeth Scarborough, Robert Stauffer, Wendy R. Terry, and Justine Trombley.

Wendy R. Terry, Ph.D. (2007), Graduate Theological Union, is a Continuing Lecturer in Religious Studies at University of California, Davis. Her other work on Marguerite includes Seeing Marguerite in the Mirror: A Linguistic Analysis of Porete's 'Mirror of Simple Souls' (Peeters, 2011).

Robert Stauffer, Ph.D. (2011), Arizona State University, is an Assistant Professor of English at Dominican College of Blauvelt in Orangeburg, NY. Among works of fiction and biography, he has also written for the forthcoming Ballad of the Lone Medievalist (Punctum Press).

“Ink will continue to flow in the debates around Marguerite and her Mirror of Simple Souls, and this book provides a superlative springboard for any aspiring student eager to dive in”.
John Arblaster, University of Antwerp. In: Speculum, Vol. 94, No. 3 (July 2019), pp. 904-906.