Medieval Mystical Narratives as Pre-Modern Utopias: New Conceptualizations of the Religious Experience by Mechthild von Magdeburg and Angela da Foligno

Abstract

Older research had traditionally assumed that the genre of utopias emerged only with Thomas Morus’s Utopia (1516), that is, at a time when the concept of the early modern nation had reached maturity and when intellectuals began to question the political status quo, looking for political and social alternatives in a future or projected world. Medievalists, however, have argued by now against this myopic and limiting perspective, pointing out, for instance, the genre of the Grail romance (Chretien de Troyes or Wolfram von Eschenbach), the Tristan romances (Gottfried von Strassburg), the many different Alexander romances, or love narratives (Marie de France) as forerunners of utopias. Carefully considered, medieval mystics can also be identified as strong performers of utopian ideas through their religious narratives reflecting otherworldly experiences, but in a different way than we might assume today from a social-historical perspective. Widening the notion of ‘utopia’ to incorporate spiritual dimensions where the individual mystic achieves a new level of divine existence, we can recognize many passages in their revelations or visions as intriguing forms of utopias in the general sense of the term because they represent radical alternatives to human life in its spiritual transformation.