Changing Places: Marguerite Porete, Meister Eckhard and the Question of Perspective

Abstract

I. Readings of Porete: Past and Present Marguerite Porete's critics, ecclesiastical and legal authorities in the main, adamantly misread her work. They took passages out of context, fracturing the unity of her work and distorting her confessional perspective. They then declared both her and her work to be heretical. Ultimately, they burned her, along with her book, at the stake. Such misinterpretation obviously abuses both Porete's theological import and her literary expertise. Similarly, modern assessments of Porete's work differ, either admitting to a sense of defeat before the disparate composition of her text Le Miroir des ames simples et aneanties, or asserting thematics based on the examination merely of a part of a whole. Peter Dronke and Robert Cottrell have performed the most provocative readings of Porete's work in recent years. Dronke postulates the significance of an emergent (and, to my mind, acontextual) feminism arising from incidents of what he calls in Le Miroir. He finds that Marguerite expresses personal concerns through the eruption of poetry embedded in prose: Marguerite... uses a 'bound' form... The canzone is her prologue, her first 'manifesto'; the rondeau comes near the close, and is perhaps the most effective crystallization of her thoughts. The other lyrical passages occur at high points, at the most climatic moments [This shows] a greatly increased subjectivity.(1) While such an interpretation importantly lobbies for a notion of 'selfhood' in her work, it does not grapple with the theological issues which so clearly motivate the construction of Porete's text. Robert Cottrell develops a sophisticated Lacanian reading of Le Miroir, taking as his emblem for the interpretive process an introductory allegorical incident. Porete describes a maiden yearning for her far-away lover. Attempting to capture his image and bring him closer, she commissions a painting. Through the contemplation of this painting, she not only succeeds in representing her lover, she actually effects his presence. Referring to the 'mirror stage,' Cottrell talks about the apprehension of the 'other.' Once totality with the 'other' is achieved, voice is extraneous; speech subsides into a non-Logos. Cottrell examines the structure of language in Porete, demonstrating that it enacts a form of linguistic via negativa. While Dronke spoke of selfhood, Cottrell obviates personal intervention in the text. He cites Porete: ... cette parole depasse nos ecritures, si bien que nous ne pouvons pas [la] comprendre.(2) Cottrell's stimulating study, however, still skims the surface of theological concerns. The theological dimension of the text is everywhere present, yet incessantly eludes critical focus.(3) Significantly, Marguerite Porete sent the first copies of Le Miroir to clerics and to the Bishop of Chalons-sur-Marne. The proof that a theological interpretation lies at the crux of her textual production is the irony that her self-selected readership should turn inquisitorial; they take her word as a confessional statement embodying distortion and heresy. Marguerite was called before the inquisitorial tribunal of Haute Lorraine, then remanded to the Inquisition in Paris; on May 30,1310 she was publicly burned. Her theological perspective was judged derivative of the teachings of Meister Eckhard, themselves labelled heretical in 1311, and also deemed representative of teachings of the heretical sect of the Free Spirits.(4) II. Theological Parameters One way to try to come to terms with the theological component of Porete's work is to examine traditional doctrine, applying it as an interpretive grid outlining the parameters which her work exceeds. My contention is that rather than producing an heretical document, Porete in fact entered into a prolonged and thoughtful dialogue with church doctrine, exercising literary techniques to illustrate, empower, and sometimes, to expand, traditional theological positions. …