Klappentext

The aim of this book is to investigate the delicate relationship between female sanctity and madness, in a time-frame extending from medieval until modern times. Constellated by visions, ecstatic raptures, morbid rituals,
stigmata and obsessions, the complex phenomenology of female mysticism appears in fact to be articulated and polymorphous, traversed by 'representations' that it seems possible to link to the wide spectrum of mental disorders, as well to the hagiographic stereotypes and anthropological
implications. Male and female scholars from different disciplines (from history to philology, from anthropology to art history, from theology to literary criticism, from psychiatry to psychoanalysis) try to outline a thematic and problematic itinerary, intended to examine, step by step, potential
pathological aspects and contexts of reference for the purpose of attempting to reconstruct the complex evolutionary trajectory of female mystical
language of the Middle Ages and of modern times.