Review of Peter Tyler, Teresa of Avila: Doctor of the Soul, London: Bloomsbury, 2013. 223 pages

Peter Tyler had two main purposes, which he lays out in the Introduction to his book, in undertaking to write on the life, context, and work of the 16th century Spanish Carmelite nun, monastic reformer, mystic, saint, Doctor of the Church, and, as he calls her in the book’s subtitle, doctor of the soul, Teresa of Avila: first, to place her, especially by the style of her writing, within the medieval tradition of ‘mystical theology’; second, to bring her into conversation with the post-modern world, in particular in light of a certain trend today of revisiting, in the face of the crisis of the ‘death of modernity’, the riches of the pre-modern era. The first of these purposes is accomplished in Parts One and Two of the book’s three Parts, while the second purpose is approached in Part Three