Angelika Frescher-Molitor

• C3: Precarious Appearance: Aesthetic Discourses in Mystical Texts of the Middle Ages

In the text Das fließende Licht der Gottheit, attributed to Mechthild of Magdeburg, not only metaphors of light, luminousness and deception play a key role, but also metaphors of corporeality, which are focalised as central figures of aesthetic reflection in this project. It is striking that descriptions that seem obvious and plausible for the human body are also used to visualise the divine. When reference is made to the ‘chest of the eternal father’ or ‘his flowing mouth’, this suggests the imagination of a divine body. But what is the purpose of these corporeal representations of the divinity? The thesis explores this question by comparing the Middle High German text Das fließende Licht der Gottheit with the Latin version of the text, Lux divinitatis. Comparing these texts on an interpretative level makes it possible to analyse whether and in what sense differences between the vernacular and Latin language influence the aesthetic dynamics of representation of divine corporeality and corporeal divinity.

• Mechthild von Magdeburg
• deutsch- und lateinsprachige Mystik
• Körpermetaphorik
• Lateinische Übersetzungen