Description: Translator's Note Introduction Squaring the Mystic Circle A Historic Formation I. A Place to Lose Oneself 1. The Monastery and the Public Square: Madness in the Crowd The Idiot Woman (Fourth Century) Laughters of Madmen (Sixth Century) 2. The Garden: Delirium and Delights of Hieronymous Bosch A Paradise Withdrawn Encyclopedias That Create Absences Paths Leading Nowhere Calligraphies of Bodies II. A Topics 3. The New Science "Corpus Mysticum," or the Missing Body "Mystical" as the Adjective of a Secret The Substantive of a Science 4. Manners of Speaking Presuppositions: A Linguistic Pragmatics "Mystic Phrases": Diego de Jess, Introducer of John of the Cross III. The Circumstances of the Mystic Utterance 5. The "Conversar" The "Dialogue" A Preliminary: The Volo (From Meister Eckhart to Madame Guyon) 6. The Institution of Speech Whence to Speak? The "J" Prefacing The Experimental Science (Jean-Joseph Surin) The Fiction of the Soul, Foundation of The Interior Castle (Teresa of Avila) IV. Figures of the Wildman 7. The Enlightened Illiterate Textual Histories (1630-90) The Angel in the Wilderness The Legend of the Pauper 8. The "Little Saints" of Aquitaine The "Deficiencies" of the Science (1606) The Persecution of "Extraordinary Devotions" (1615-45) "A Kind of Illuminati" 9. Labadie the Nomad A Spirit in Search of a Place The Invention of Extension Overture to a Poetics of the Body List of Abbreviations Notes Index