Experimental Theology in America : Madame Guyon, Fénelon, and Their Readers

In this study of Madame Guyon and, her defender, Francois de Fénelon, the Archbishop of Cambray, Patricia Ward demonstrates how the ideas of these seventeenth-century Catholics were transmitted into an ongoing tradition of Protestant devotional literature—one that continues to influence American evangelicals and charismatic Christians today. Down a winding (and fascinating) historical path, Ward traces how the lives and writings of these two somewhat obscure Catholic believers in Quietism came to such prominence in American spirituality—offering, in part, a fascinating glance at the role of women in the history of devotional writing.

Patricia A. Ward is Professor Emerita of French and Comparative Literature at Vanderbilt University, where she served as Director of the W.T. Bandy Center for Baudelaire and Modern French Studies and Chair of the Department of French and Italian. Her previous books include Baudelaire and the Poetics of Modernity, Joseph Joubert and the Critical Tradition, and The Medievalism of Victor Hugo. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee.