ABSTRACT
Does Story of a Soul reveal spiritual genius like the musical genius of Mozart or merely youthful sentimentality? Is Story of a Soul pious musings unworthy of scholarly attention or spiritual literature worthy of serious exploration? Sensible people have held these different viewpoints. Why are there such conflicting responses to this memoir from Thérèse of Lisieux, a French Catholic woman who, by conventional standards, never did much, and died at twenty-four years of age in 1897?
