BOOKS THAT have spanned a long time in their making are oft en indebted to people, events, seminars, publications, institutions, and encounters that are noted and archived, as well as to those inadvertent and almost happenstance occasions that could—and do—easily slip from the field of vision. Beginning from the moment I reached for the volume entitled The Complete Works of Hadewijch on a slow day while working in the Abbey Bookstore in Paris in 1989—and determined shortly thereafter that it would be the subject of any future academic endeavor I might undertake—many such lacunae punctuate the memory of my work with Hadewijch. I have not, however, forgotten the question of my MA adviser when I declared to her that I wanted to work on women’s mystical texts: “Is that really literature?” I am, in some odd way, indebted to that unintentionally provocative question.
This book has, at various moments in its making, benefited from the following support: the hospitality of the Huntington Library; a visiting professorship from the UCSIA Foundation at the University of Antwerp; a Columbia University Junior Faculty Development Grant; a Morton Bloomfield Fellowship from the English Department at Harvard University; a Woodrow Wilson Postdoctoral Fellowship at Northwestern University’s Kaplan Institute for the Humanities; and a Cardinal Flahiff Fellowship at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. Versions of chapters were presented at the University of Antwerp, Yale University, UC Riverside, Harvard University, Princeton University, Southern Connecticut State University, and Northwestern University. I am very thankful for the support from these institutions and for the hospitality and helpful criticism of the individuals there. I would also like to express my appreciation to the Warner Fund at the University Seminars at Columbia University for their help in publication. The ideas presented have benefited from discussions in the University Seminars on Cultural Memory.
Above all, I would like to thank Amy Hollywood, whose thoughtful and provocative discussions, meticulous attention to many draft s, and generosity with her time, support, scholarship, and friendship were essential to making this a better book. I owe great thanks to Nicholas Watson, whose invaluable comments strengthened this book immensely, and to Claire Waters, who read and reread the manuscript with care and tireless insight and provided tremendous guidance for the process of revision. Sally Poor’s comments and support aided earlier versions of several chapters and were critical in helping me refine my argument. I would especially like to thank Susan Boynton, for her unceasing generosity, friendship, and attention to draft s; Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer, for their loving friendship, thoughts, and everything else on scales big and small; Veerle Fraeters, for her advice and corrections in the translations from Middle Dutch; Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe, Kees Schepers, Jim Rhodes, Andrea Denny-Brown, Catherine Sanok, Anna Kelner, and Ying Ling Tiong, for their insight and encouragement along the way; and Chris Baswell, Susan Crane, Jean Howard, Bruce Robbins, and Julie Peters, for their many comments.
A special thanks to Lauren Mancia, Abigail Kret, Jillian Tan, and William Jacobs, who helped with footnotes, sources, and other painstaking work, and without whom this book would have hobbled along at a much slower pace. Thank you to Heather Jones for indexing. In the very early stirrings of this project, Ann Hutchison, Robert Sweetman, and Geert Claassens offered very helpful advice. I am also indebted to the participants in the Medieval Writing Workshop and to the editorial team at Columbia University Press, especially Wendy Lochner, senior executive editor, Christine Dunbar, assistant editor, Kerri Cox Sullivan, copy editor, and Susan Pensak, senior manuscript editor.
I cannot sufficiently recognize the tireless help and friendship of Marilyn McLaren and the eternal support of Douglas Wade, who built the desk on which the first glimmers of this project became lucid. The process was made all the more felicitous by the friendship of Alessia Ricciardi, Monique David-Ménard, Natasha Korda, Felix Ensslin, Cornelia Nixon, Mark Strand, Claire Nancy, Anne Ellett, Winifred Amaturo, Penelope Deutscher, Paul Strohm, Horacio Amigorena, Sandro Marpillero, Linda Pollak, Laurie Traktman, Antonella Moscati, and Clemens Härle. I also want to recognize the untraceable labor of a group of women without whom this book would not have emerged from its promised state: Regina Antwi, Silvia Gutierrez, Susana Macias, Rosita Monzon, Maria Triminius, and Joanne Trapp.
Finally, I would like to recognize the late Jean-François Lyotard—who knew well before I did, in 1991, what the seed of this book was—for teaching me of the responsibility associated with writing; and the late Jacques Derrida, who drove me to reiterate this in my own way.
Immeasurable gratitude to my mother, in the past promise of her present person, who ceaselessly believed in me, and to my darling Sophia, for telling me, at age two: “Get to work!”
