Abstract
Peter Tyler, Teresa of Avila: Doctor of the Soul, Bloomsbury Continuum: London, 2014; 223pp.: 9781441187840, £18.99/$32.95 (pbk)
Following on from his books John of the Cross and Return to the Mystical, Peter Tyler completes his ‘mystical trilogy’ with a refreshing and perceptive analysis of the life, writings and modern contemporary relevance of Teresa of Avila. He shows how the literary output of this sixteenth-century Spanish Carmelite nun continues to be a source of enigmatic depth for so many different scholars examining her work from different points of view within various academic disciplines. He argues that whereas Teresa’s unique manner of writing owes much to the medieval tradition of mystical theology, the intellectual rigour with which she surveys her mystical experiences is robustly expressed in a linguistic style that is as effective as that of any modern linguistic philosopher.
Part One of the three parts of his book concentrates on the turbulence of the sixteenth-century Spanish historical, political and religious context through which Teresa writes some of the most profound theological literature on prayer ever written, resulting in her being proclaimed Doctor of the Church by Pope Paul VI in 1970. In three concise, clearly focused chapters Tyler points out the immense difficulties scholars have come up against in accurately translating her unique style of writing into English, and the importance of going back to the original text, bearing in mind the social, religious and political crucible of turmoil involving the powerful Spanish Inquistion, the banning and censoring of many books and the hardening of social attitudes towards heretics, Jews and Conversos, and yet, at the same time, the extraordinary growth and development of spiritual reform, fuelled by hermits, friars and individual reformers, such as Teresa herself.
In Part Two, Tyler examines the major texts themselves, Teresa’s autobiography, the book of Foundations, The Way of Perfection and The Interior Castle. He argues that there is a shift in language from book to book, reflecting Teresa’s growing maturity in her own understanding of the imagery of the mysteries she is trying to convey, and also an increasingly more worldly wise attitude which she pragmatically adopts to achieve her aims in difficult circumstances among difficult people.
In Part Three, Tyler widens the panorama of the interpretation of Teresa’s relevance to postmodern thought. He attempts to hold a psychological conversation between Teresa and the school of psycho-analytic thought of Carl Gustav Jung, and another conversation between Teresa and Buddhist anthropology, a dialogue with contemporary notions of mindfulness and non-self. The result is a comprehensive and compelling analysis of Teresa’s work with useful and compelling parallels drawn with Buddhist thought. With a comprehensive bibliography and useful index, this volume is not only a valuable contribution to Teresian scholarship, it is also inspirational, leading us to delve deeper into the original texts of this extraordinary woman, Teresa of Avila, Doctor of the Soul.