The chapters that follow take up aspects of Bonaventure's thought on affect across genres. Through a study of their coimplication in the writings of Bonaventure, Davis asserts, we are in a position to see that "the meditational techniques and writings that scholars identify as 'affective' must be examined in conversation with medieval theological sources on the nature and significance of affectus" (5). These two turns, Davis argues, ought to be examined together, for their "coincidence and coimplication has remained largely unexamined" (4). Among the most important of these is a historical claim: that the familiar "affective turn" in medieval devotion, the turn to compassionate identification with the suffering Christ exemplified in the life of Saint Francis, had a parallel in another "affective turn": the revival of interest in Parisian schools of the twelfth century of the Dionysian vision of the cosmic order and ascent to union with God.
Multiple broad claims are set forth, in eloquent formulations. The introduction thus frames the study as one informed by critical theory, affect theory, and histories of emotion, devotion, and mystical theology. "Affect" is the keyword here, one that Davis takes care to distinguish from "emotion" invoking Rei Terada's Derridean reading of affect, Davis frames his study as one that "does not assume a unified, self-transparent subject," noting that this seems the most useful way to approach "the seemingly paradoxical experience of dispossession that medieval mystical texts describe" (28).
But the book's "Introduction: Weighing Affect in Medieval Christian Devotion" targets a broader audience: it seeks to engage those working in the fields of devotional literature, the history of emotion, and affect theory, inviting such scholars to recognize the relevance of theological analysis to current conversations in these domains. They are addressed chiefly to those in the field of historical theology. The volume's five chapters on Bonaventure's works are written with lucidity, precision, and analytical rigor. The central argument of the book is that "the medieval devotional techniques aimed at inciting and intensifying affective response (usually of compassion, pity, and grief) to Christ's passion found their complement in scholastic reflection on the nature of the affectus and its relationship to the space and time of the soul's return to God" (4).
But as he does so, he seeks to link this strand of Bonaventure's thought-the mystical-to another strand, the devotional. Throughout, Davis explicates the mystical and cosmic vision of the sixth-century Syriac ascetic Dionysius the Areopagite and the uptake and redeployment of Dionysian mystical theology in the Bonaventuran corpus. It deserves and rewards that attention in its thoughtful interpretation of affectus, the scholastic concept of synderesis, and the "becoming-body of the soul" in selected works of Bonaventure. With its resonant title, arresting cover illustration-a hooded image of Francis of Assisi deep in shadow, holding a skull-and opening injunction from Bonaventure's Legenda Maior ("Take a corpse, and place it where you like" ), it compels attention. Sarah is a slender but ambitious book.
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