Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages

by Umberto Eco

In this authoritative, lively book, the celebrated Italian novelist and philosopher Umberto Eco presents a learned summary of medieval aesthetic ideas. Juxtaposing theology and science, poetry and mysticism, Eco explores the relationship that existed between the aesthetic theories and the artistic experience and practice of medieval culture.

The Discarded Image

An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature

by C. S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis' The Discarded Image paints a lucid picture of the medieval world view, as historical and cultural background to the literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. It describes the "image" discarded by later ages as "the medieval synthesis itself, the whole organization of their theology, science and history into a single, complex, harmonious mental model of the universe." This, Lewis' last book, was... (more)

Medieval Exegesis : The Four Senses of Scripture: Volume 2

Medieval Exegesis : The Four Senses of Scripture: Volume 2

by Henri de Lubac

Originally published in French as Exégèse médiévale, Henri de Lubac’s multivolume study of medieval exegesis and theology has remained one of the most significant works of modern biblical studies. Available now for the first time in English, this long-sought-after second volume of Medieval Exegesis, translated by E. M. Macierowski, advances the effort to make de Lubac’s major study accessible to the widest... (more)

An Anthology of Beowulf Criticism.

Courtly Love Undressed: Reading Through Clothes in Medieval French Culture (Middle Ages)

Courtly Love Undressed: Reading Through Clothes in Medieval French Culture (Middle Ages)

by E. Jane Burns

In the later Middle Ages, clothing was used to mark religious, military, and chivalric orders; in the courtly milieu, more specifically, the ostentatious display of luxury dress was used as a means of self-definition for the ruling elite. In "Courtly Love Undressed", E. Jane Burns explores the representation of this material culture in the literary texts and other documents that imagine various functions for elite... (more)

Medieval Fabrications: Dress, Textiles, Clothwork, and Other Cultural Imaginings (The New Middle Ages)

Medieval Fabrications: Dress, Textiles, Clothwork, and Other Cultural Imaginings (The New Middle Ages)

The varied cultural functions of dress, textiles and clothwork provide an especially cogent lens through which to re-examine our assumptions about the Middle Ages because of the topic's conceptual breadth. Its implications range from the highly theoretical to the very concrete. At one end of the spectrum, questions of dress call up feminist theoretical investigations into the body and subjectivity, while... (more)

Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (The New Historicism : Studies in Cultural Poetics, 1)

Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (The New Historicism : Studies in Cultural Poetics, 1)

by Caroline Walker Bynum

A carefully nuanced, serene explanation of one of the most puzzling aspects of medieval culture. -- New York Times Book Review A rich, positive and thoughtful description of the way some medieval women managed to control and develop their own subjectivities and social roles. -- Womens Review of Books What it contributes to our understanding of gender in the language and practice of... (more)