Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski has written a couple pieces related to her recent book, The Strange Case of Ermine de Reims: A Medieval Woman Between Demons and Saints.
In the first, she subjects her book to "The Page 99 Test," wherein she opens the book to page 99 and reveals what she sees there. Attributed to Ford Madox Ford, the test is meant to "reveal the quality of the whole."
When I opened my book on page 99 I didn’t expect to find one of my main arguments encapsulated there, but there it was: in a passage from the Visions I quote on that page a demon warns Ermine that she could be accused of being a sorcière, the French word for sorcerer or witch.
And next, she posts on My Book, The Movie, "dreamcasting" an adaptation of her book into film.
Unlike my previous scholarly books this one actually has a plot and a riveting one at that. A simple woman named Ermine, widowed and penniless in late medieval Reims, moves into a room near her confessor, an Augustinian friar, whose ambition is to make her a saint. So there are some juicy roles in this drama.
