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Racha Kirakosian, Die Vita der Christina von Hane. Untersuchung und Edition, Hermaea 144 (Berlin and Boston, Mass.: Walter de Gruyter, 2017). xi + 397 pp. ISBN 978-3-11-053559-4. €99.95.
The in itself unusual object of this study is the Vita of the thirteenth-century Rhineland Premonstratensian nun and mystic Christina von Hane, from a sixteenth-century copy now in the Strasbourg Bibliotheque Nationale et Universitaire MS 324, where it is followed by a legend of the conversion of the Magdalene (known also from elsewhere). This exemplary investigation examines the presentation of the (intense) bride-mysticism and the union of the soul with God expressed in the life of Christina from a variety of angles, stressing the material textuality of the work and its performativity - in simplest terms, not just what it is, nor on Christina as a mystic, but how the book we have is intended to function as a text. Jonathan Culler's...