Marjorie G. Jones: Daring Spiritual Adventures

Kingston Shakespeare Podcasts

Through historiographical reassessment of the life of Frances Yates, Marjorie G. Jones seeks to expound an adventurous side to Frances Yates’ world view as an autodidact and an outsider to traditional academia. In contrast to views of Yates’ non-existent spiritual life, Jones builds an analogy with the daring spiritual adventures that Yates studied, Giordano Bruno in particular, and the life she lived—‘rising beyond dogma to a higher truth’, as Jones explains. Interested especially in women’s spiritual journeys, Marjorie G. Jones is the author of the first biography of British historian Frances Yates, Frances Yates and the Hermetic Tradition (Ibis Press, 2008, since translated into Japanese and Italian) and a recently published biography of Philadelphia Quaker Mary Vaux Walcott, The Life and Times of Mary Vaux Walcott (Schiffer Press, 2016), which has been nominated for the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts’ Mary Lynn Kotz award. A resident of Philadelphia, currently she teaches history for Villanova University’s college program at Graterford Prison in Pennsylvania. Before moving to Philadelphia, she taught history for twenty years at Mercy College, Dobbs Ferry, NY and for its college program at Sing Sing prison. A graduate of Wheaton College, Massachusetts, she is also a graduate of the Rutgers Law School and the Graduate Faculty of the New School in NYC, where she focused on Historical Studies. The conference Frances Yates: The Art of Memory was held on April 30, 2016 at the Rose Theatre, Kingston. The session was chaired by Francesca Bugliani. Recorded by Anna Rajala and Timo Uotinen. More at: www.kingstonshakespeareseminar.wordpress.com