DownloadThe Portobello Bookshop Gift Guide 2024

The Experience of Beauty in the Middle Ages

Mary Carruthers author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Oxford University Press

Published:25th Apr '13

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

This hardback is available in another edition too:

The Experience of Beauty in the Middle Ages cover

This book articulates a new approach to medieval aesthetic values, emphasizing the sensory and emotional basis of all medieval arts, their love of play and fine craftsmanship, of puzzles, and of strong contrasts. Written for a general educated audience as well as students and scholars in the field, it offers an understanding of medieval literature and art that is rooted in the perceptions and feelings of ordinary life, made up of play and laughter as well as serious work. Medieval stylistic values of variety, sweetness, good taste, and ordinary beauty are grounded in classical and medieval biological theories of change and flux in the human body, not only in symbolism and theology. The book will appeal to all lovers of medieval arts, literature, architecture, music, and painting, as well as serious students of religion and the language of beauty.

Readers will want to savor the essays, chew them over in order to release their flavor ... this deceptively slim book suggests a revision of everything we think about the medieval understanding and experience of faith * Rachel Fulton Brown, The Medieval Review *
The Experience of Beauty in the Middle Ages is a jumble of interesting and perceptive insights into the conceptual underpinnings of medieval art, architecture, and literature. * Stephen Jaeger, The American Historical Review *

ISBN: 9780199590322

Dimensions: 224mm x 148mm x 20mm

Weight: 450g

246 pages