ENN New Voices: Marguerite Porete's Mirror of Simple Souls: Interview with Geneviève Barrette

In this episode, Jacinta Shrimpton speaks with Geneviève Barrette, postdoctoral researcher at McGill University, about Marguerite Porete, a turn-of-the-fourteenth-century mystic thinker. We focus on the context and content of Porete’s only surviving work, an edification treatise entitled, The Mirror of Simple Souls. Barrette explains the role Porete’s work had in her being burned at the stake, and what it is that makes the treatise so unique. We go into detail about what Porete meant by the annihilation of the soul—a key concept in her treatise. Barrette also speaks about Porete’s notion of virtue and how it relates to the annihilation of the soul, which is a live debate in Porete scholarship today. We wrap up the episode with Barrette sharing insight into the challenges that she, as a specialist in medieval philosophy, has faced due to working on a philosopher who wrote and thought outside of the university tradition of her time.

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References
Work by Geneviève Barrette
Barrette, Geneviève. ‘Marguerite Porete et la superfluité des vertus’. Philosophiques, Forthcoming.

Main editions of the The Mirror of Simple Souls
Porete, Marguerite. Marguerite Porete. Le mirouer des simples ames/Margaretae Porete. Speculum simplicium animarum. Edited by Romana Guarnieri and Paul Verdeyen. Corpus Christianorum, LXIX. Turnhout: Brepols, 1986.
———. ‘The Mirror of Simple Souls: A Middle English Translation’. Edited by Marilyn Doiron. Archivio italiano per la storia della pietà V (1968): 244–382.
French and English Modern Translations
Porete, Marguerite. Le miroir des âmes simples et anéanties, et qui seulement demeurent en vouloir et désir d’amour. Translated by Max Huot de Longchamp. Paris: Albin Michel, 2011.
———. Le Miroir des simples âmes anéanties et qui seulement demeurent en vouloir et désir d’amour. Translated by Claude Louis-Combet. Grenoble: Jérôme Millon, 1991.
———. The Mirror of Simple Souls. Translated by Ellen L. Babinsky. New York; Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1993.
———. The Mirror of Simple Souls. Translated by Edmund Colledge, Judith Grant, and J. C. Marler. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999.

Literature on Marguerite Porete and the The Mirror of Simple Souls
Bermon, Pascale. ‘Marguerite Porete on “Willing” and “Willing Nothing”’. In The Will Discourse in Late Medieval Philosophy and Theology, edited by M. Michalowska and M. Dunne, Routledge, forthcoming.
Bertho, Marie. Le miroir des âmes simples et anéanties de Marguerite Porète: une vie blessée d’amour. Fonds Michel Thériault. Paris: Découvrir, 1993.
Boulnois, Olivier. ‘Qu’est-ce que la liberté de l’esprit?: La parole de Marguerite et la raison du théologien’. In Marguerite Porete et le Miroir des simples âmes. Perspectives historiques, philosophiques et littéraires. 127–54. Études de philosophie médiévale, CII. Paris: Vrin, 2013.
Dubois, Danielle C. ‘Natural and Supernatural Virtues in the Thirteenth Century: The Case of Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls’. Journal of Medieval History 43, no. 2 (15 March 2017): 174–92.
Field, Sean  L. ‘William of Paris’s Inquisitions against Marguerite Porete and her Book’. In Marguerite Porete et le Miroir des simples âmes. Perspectives historiques, philosophiques et littéraires, edited by Sean L. Field, Robert E. Lerner, and Sylvain Piron, 233–47. Études de philosophie médiévale, CII. Paris: Vrin, 2013.
Field, Sean L. The Beguine, the Angel, and the Inquisitor: The Trials of Marguerite Porete and Guiard of Cressonessart. University of Notre Dame Press, 2012.
Field, Sean L, Robert E. Lerner, and Sylvain Piron, eds. Marguerite Porete et le Miroir des simples âmes. Perspectives historiques, philosophiques et littéraires. Études de philosophie médiévale, CII. Paris: Vrin, 2013.
Guarnieri, Romana. ‘Il movimento del libero spirito: Testi e Documenti’. Archivio italiano per la storia della pietà 4 (1965): 351–708.
———. ‘Lo Specchio delle anime semplici e Margherita Poirette’. L’Observatore Romano, 16 June 1946, 3.
Hasenohr, Geneviève. ‘La tradition du Miroir des simples âmes au XVe siècle : de Marguerite Porète († 1310) à Marguerite de Navarre’. Comptes rendus des séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 143, no. 4 (1999): 1347–66.
———. ‘Retour sur les caractères linguistiques du manuscrit de Chantilly et de ses ancêtres’. In Marguerite Porete et le Miroir des simples âmes. Perspectives historiques, philosophiques et littéraires, edited by Sean L. Field, Robert E. Lerner, and Sylvain Piron, 103–26. Études de philosophie médiévale, CII. Paris: J. Vrin, 2013.
Kangas, David. ‘Dangerous Joy: Marguerite Porete’s Good-Bye to the Virtues’. The Journal of Religion 91, no. 3 (2011): 299–319.
King, Peter. ‘Marguerite Porete and Godfrey of Fontaines: Detachable Will, Discardable Virtue, Transformative Love’. In Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy, 6:168–88. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.
———. ‘The Belgian Connection. Godfrey of Fontaines and Marguerite Porete’. In A Companion to Godfrey of Fontaines, edited by Antoine Côté, Martin Pickavé, and Michael Szlachta. Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition. Leiden: Brill, forthcoming.
Jasmin, Stéphanie. Les Marguerite(s). Montréal: Éditions Somme toute, 2018.
Lu, Huanan. ‘Marguerite Porete et l’enquête de 1323 sur le béguinage Sainte-Élisabeth de Valenciennes’. Revue du Nord 440, no. 3 (2021): 451–85.
Piron, Sylvain. ‘Adnichilatio’. In Mots médiévaux offerts à Ruedi Imbach, edited by Iñigo Atucha, Dragos Calma, Catherine König-Pralong, and Irene Zavattero, 23–31. Textes et études du Moyen Âge 57. Turnhout: Brepols, 2011.
———. ‘Marguerite, entre les béguines et les maîtres’. In Marguerite Porete et le Miroir des simples âmes. Perspectives historiques, philosophiques et littéraires, edited by Sean L. Field, Robert E. Lerner, and Sylvain Piron, 69–101. Études de philosophie médiévale, CII. Paris: Vrin, 2013.
Piron, Sylvain, and Justine Trombley. ‘L’invention de l’impeccabilitas’. Oliviana. Mouvements et dissidences spirituels XIIIe-XIVe siècles, no. 7 (8 July 2023).
Rea, Michael. ‘Self-Annihilation in Marguerite Porete’. Religious Studies, 20 February 2023, 1–9.
Robinson, Joanne Maguire. Nobility and Annihilation in Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001.
Stauffer, Robert, and Wendy R. Terry, eds. A Companion to Marguerite Porete and The Mirror of Simple Souls. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2017.
Trombley, Justine L. ‘The Master and the Mirror: The Influence of Marguerite Porete on Meister Eckhart’. Magistra 16, no. 1 (2010): 60–102.
Verdeyen, Paul. ‘Le procès d’inquisition contre Marguerite Porete et Guiard de Cressonessart (1309-1310)’. Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 81, no. 1 (1986): 47–94.
Zum Brunn, Émilie. ‘Non Willing in Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Annihilated Souls’. Bulletin de l’Institut Historique Belge de Rome 58 (1988): 11–22.