Thinking Medieval

Thinking Medieval PDF Author: M. Bull
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230501575
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 167

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Book Description
This book is aimed at students coming to the study of western European medieval history for the first time, and also graduate students on interdisciplinary medieval studies programmes. It examines the place of the Middle Ages in modern popular culture, exploring the roots of the stereotypes that appear in films, on television and in the press, and asking why they remain so persistent. The book also asks whether 'medieval' is indeed a useful category in terms of historical periodization. It investigates some of the particular challenges posed by medieval sources and the ways in which they have survived. And it concludes with an exploration of the relevance of medieval history in today's world.

Thinking Medieval

Thinking Medieval PDF Author: M. Bull
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230501575
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 167

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book is aimed at students coming to the study of western European medieval history for the first time, and also graduate students on interdisciplinary medieval studies programmes. It examines the place of the Middle Ages in modern popular culture, exploring the roots of the stereotypes that appear in films, on television and in the press, and asking why they remain so persistent. The book also asks whether 'medieval' is indeed a useful category in terms of historical periodization. It investigates some of the particular challenges posed by medieval sources and the ways in which they have survived. And it concludes with an exploration of the relevance of medieval history in today's world.

The Bright Ages

The Bright Ages PDF Author: Matthew Gabriele
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062980912
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
"The beauty and levity that Perry and Gabriele have captured in this book are what I think will help it to become a standard text for general audiences for years to come….The Bright Ages is a rare thing—a nuanced historical work that almost anyone can enjoy reading.”—Slate "Incandescent and ultimately intoxicating." —The Boston Globe A lively and magisterial popular history that refutes common misperceptions of the European Middle Ages, showing the beauty and communion that flourished alongside the dark brutality—a brilliant reflection of humanity itself. The word “medieval” conjures images of the “Dark Ages”—centuries of ignorance, superstition, stasis, savagery, and poor hygiene. But the myth of darkness obscures the truth; this was a remarkable period in human history. The Bright Ages recasts the European Middle Ages for what it was, capturing this 1,000-year era in all its complexity and fundamental humanity, bringing to light both its beauty and its horrors. The Bright Ages takes us through ten centuries and crisscrosses Europe and the Mediterranean, Asia and Africa, revisiting familiar people and events with new light cast upon them. We look with fresh eyes on the Fall of Rome, Charlemagne, the Vikings, the Crusades, and the Black Death, but also to the multi-religious experience of Iberia, the rise of Byzantium, and the genius of Hildegard and the power of queens. We begin under a blanket of golden stars constructed by an empress with Germanic, Roman, Spanish, Byzantine, and Christian bloodlines and end nearly 1,000 years later with the poet Dante—inspired by that same twinkling celestial canopy—writing an epic saga of heaven and hell that endures as a masterpiece of literature today. The Bright Ages reminds us just how permeable our manmade borders have always been and of what possible worlds the past has always made available to us. The Middle Ages may have been a world “lit only by fire” but it was one whose torches illuminated the magnificent rose windows of cathedrals, even as they stoked the pyres of accused heretics. The Bright Ages contains an 8-page color insert.

Don't Think for Yourself

Don't Think for Yourself PDF Author: Peter Adamson
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess
ISBN: 0268203385
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
How do we judge whether we should be willing to follow the views of experts or whether we ought to try to come to our own, independent views? This book seeks the answer in medieval philosophical thought. In this engaging study into the history of philosophy and epistemology, Peter Adamson provides an answer to a question as relevant today as it was in the medieval period: how and when should we turn to the authoritative expertise of other people in forming our own beliefs? He challenges us to reconsider our approach to this question through a constructive recovery of the intellectual and cultural traditions of the Islamic world, the Byzantine Empire, and Latin Christendom. Adamson begins by foregrounding the distinction in Islamic philosophy between taqlīd, or the uncritical acceptance of authority, and ijtihād, or judgment based on independent effort, the latter of which was particularly prized in Islamic law, theology, and philosophy during the medieval period. He then demonstrates how the Islamic tradition paves the way for the development of what he calls a “justified taqlīd,” according to which one develops the skills necessary to critically and selectively follow an authority based on their reliability. The book proceeds to reconfigure our understanding of the relation between authority and independent thought in the medieval world by illuminating how women found spaces to assert their own intellectual authority, how medieval writers evaluated the authoritative status of Plato and Aristotle, and how independent reasoning was deployed to defend one Abrahamic faith against the other. This clear and eloquently written book will interest scholars in and enthusiasts of medieval philosophy, Islamic studies, Byzantine studies, and the history of thought.

Toward a Global Middle Ages

Toward a Global Middle Ages PDF Author: Bryan C. Keene
Publisher: Getty Publications
ISBN: 160606598X
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
This important and overdue book examines illuminated manuscripts and other book arts of the Global Middle Ages. Illuminated manuscripts and illustrated or decorated books—like today’s museums—preserve a rich array of information about how premodern peoples conceived of and perceived the world, its many cultures, and everyone’s place in it. Often a Eurocentric field of study, manuscripts are prisms through which we can glimpse the interconnected global history of humanity. Toward a Global Middle Ages is the first publication to examine decorated books produced across the globe during the period traditionally known as medieval. Through essays and case studies, the volume’s multidisciplinary contributors expand the historiography, chronology, and geography of manuscript studies to embrace a diversity of objects, individuals, narratives, and materials from Africa, Asia, Australasia, and the Americas—an approach that both engages with and contributes to the emerging field of scholarly inquiry known as the Global Middle Ages. Featuring more than 160 color illustrations, this wide-ranging and provocative collection is intended for all who are interested in engaging in a dialogue about how books and other textual objects contributed to world-making strategies from about 400 to 1600.

Mary in the Middle Ages

Mary in the Middle Ages PDF Author: Luigi Gambero
Publisher: Ignatius Press
ISBN: 1681493284
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
In his book Mary and the Fathers of the Church, Fr. Luigi Gambero presented a comprehensive survey of Marian doctrine and devotion during the first eight Christian centuries. Mary in the Middle Ages continues this journey up to the end of the fifteenth century, surveying the growth of Marian doctrine and devotion during one of the most important eras of Christian history: the Middle Ages. Fr. Gambero presents the thoughts, words, and prayers of great theologians, bishops, monks, and mystics who witnessed to and promoted the dedication of the Christian people to the Mother of God. Each chapter concludes with readings from the works of these important authors. Many of these texts have never before been translated into English. More than thirty great figures each receive an entire chapter, including such giants as the St. Anselm, St. Bernard, St. Anthony of Padua, St. Bonaventure, St. Albert the Great, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Brigid of Sweden, and Raymond Lull. "A fascinating picture of one of the foundational elements of modern Catholic theology, namely, devotion. All in all, a worthwhile and informative study of devotion to the Blessed Virgin." -Benedict Groeschel, C.F.R. "This book is indispensable for current students of Mariology." -Kenneth Baker, S.J.

A History of Political Thought

A History of Political Thought PDF Author: Janet Coleman
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
ISBN: 9780631186533
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
This volume continues the story of European political theorising by focusing on medieval and Renaissance thinkers. It includes extensive discussion of the practices that underpinned medieval political theories and which continued to play crucial roles in the eventual development of early-modern political institutions and debates. The author strikes a balance between trying to understand the philosophical cogency of medieval and Renaissance arguments on the one hand, elucidating why historically-suited medieval and Renaissance thinkers thought the ways they did about politics; and why we often think otherwise.

The Legitimacy of the Middle Ages

The Legitimacy of the Middle Ages PDF Author: Andrew Cole
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822392542
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
This collection of essays argues that any valid theory of the modern should—indeed must—reckon with the medieval. Offering a much-needed correction to theorists such as Hans Blumenberg, who in his Legitimacy of the Modern Age describes the "modern age" as a complete departure from the Middle Ages, these essays forcefully show that thinkers from Adorno to Žižek have repeatedly drawn from medieval sources to theorize modernity. To forget the medieval, or to discount its continued effect on contemporary thought, is to neglect the responsibilities of periodization. In The Legitimacy of the Middle Ages, modernists and medievalists, as well as scholars specializing in eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and twentieth-century comparative literature, offer a new history of theory and philosophy through essays on secularization and periodization, Marx’s (medieval) theory of commodity fetishism, Heidegger’s scholasticism, and Adorno’s nominalist aesthetics. One essay illustrates the workings of medieval mysticism in the writing of Freud’s most famous patient, Daniel Paul Schreber, author of Memoirs of My Nervous Illness (1903). Another looks at Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s Empire, a theoretical synthesis whose conscientious medievalism was the subject of much polemic in the post-9/11 era, a time in which premodernity itself was perceived as a threat to western values. The collection concludes with an afterword by Fredric Jameson, a theorist of postmodernism who has engaged with the medieval throughout his career. Contributors: Charles D. Blanton, Andrew Cole, Kathleen Davis, Michael Hardt, Bruce Holsinger, Fredric Jameson, Ethan Knapp, Erin Labbie, Jed Rasula, D. Vance Smith, Michael Uebel

A World Lit Only by Fire

A World Lit Only by Fire PDF Author: William Manchester
Publisher: Back Bay Books
ISBN: 0316082791
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 367

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Book Description
A "lively and engaging" history of the Middle Ages (Dallas Morning News) from the acclaimed historian William Manchester, author of The Last Lion. From tales of chivalrous knights to the barbarity of trial by ordeal, no era has been a greater source of awe, horror, and wonder than the Middle Ages. In handsomely crafted prose, and with the grace and authority of his extraordinary gift for narrative history, William Manchester leads us from a civilization tottering on the brink of collapse to the grandeur of its rebirth: the dense explosion of energy that spawned some of history's greatest poets, philosophers, painters, adventurers, and reformers, as well as some of its most spectacular villains. "Manchester provides easy access to a fascinating age when our modern mentality was just being born." --Chicago Tribune

Disability in Medieval Europe

Disability in Medieval Europe PDF Author: Irina Metzler
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134217382
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 535

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Book Description
This impressive volume presents a thorough examination of all aspects of physical impairment and disability in medieval Europe. Examining a popular era that is of great interest to many historians and researchers, Irene Metzler presents a theoretical framework of disability and explores key areas such as: medieval theoretical concepts theology and natural philosophy notions of the physical body medical theory and practice. Bringing into play the modern day implications of medieval thought on the issue, this is a fascinating and informative addition to the research studies of medieval history, history of medicine and disability studies scholars the English-speaking world over.

Philosophy and Theology in the Middle Ages

Philosophy and Theology in the Middle Ages PDF Author: G. R. Evans
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134962118
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 137

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Book Description
In the ancient world being a philosopher was a practical alternative to being a christian. Philosophical systems offered intellectual, practical and moral codes for living. By the Middle Ages however philosophy was largely, though inconsistently, incorporated into Christian belef. From the end of the Roman Empire to the Reformation and Renaissance of the sixteenth century Christian theologians had a virtual monopoly on higher education. The complex interaction between theology and philosophy, which was the result of the efforts of Christian leaders and thinkers to assimilate the most sophisticated ideas of science and secular learning into their own system of thought, is the subject of this book. Augustine, as the most widely read author in the Middle Ages, is the starting point. Dr Evans then discusses the classical sources in general which the medieval scholar would have had access to when he wanted to study philosophy and its theological implications. Part I ends with an analysis of the problems of logic, language and rhetoric. In Part II the sequence of topics - God, cosmos, man follow the outline of the summa, or systematic encyclopedia of theology, which developed from the twelfth century as a text book framework. Does God exist? What is he like? What are human beings? Is there a purpose to their lives? These are the great questions of philosophy and religion and the issues to which the medieval theologian addressed himself. From `divine simplicity' to ethics and politics, this book is a lively introduction to the debates and ideas of the Middle Ages.