Envisaging Heaven in the Middle Ages deals with medieval notions of heaven in theological and mystical writings, in visions of the Otherworld, and in medieval art, poetry and music. It considers the influence of such notions in the secular literature of some of the greatest writers of the period including Chrétien de Troyes and Chaucer. The coherence and beauty of these notions make heaven one of the most impressive medieval ‘cathedrals of the mind’.With contributions from...

The compilation Fortunes Stabilnes, the English poetry Charles d'Orléans wrote in the course of his twenty-five year captivity in England after Agincourt, requires a larger lens than that of Chaucerianism, through which ithas most often been viewed. A fresh view from another perspective, one that attends to form and style, as well as to the poet's French traditions, reveals a more conceptually complex and innovative kind of poetry than we have seenuntil now.The essays colle...

What is a rule, if it appears to become confused with life? And what is a human life, if, in every one of its gestures, of its words, and of its silences, it cannot be distinguished from the rule?It is to these questions that Agamben's new book turns by means of an impassioned reading of the fascinating and massive phenomenon of Western monasticism from Pachomius to St. Francis. The book reconstructs in detail the life of the monks with their obsessive attention to temporal articul...

Serendipities is an iconoclastic, dazzlingly erudite and witty demonstration, by one of the world's most brilliant thinkers, of how myths and lunacies can produce historical developments of no small significance. In Eco's words, 'even errors can produce interesting side effects'. Eco's book shows how:-- believers in a flat earth helped Columbus accidentally discover America-- the medieval myth of Prester John, the Christian king in Asia, assisted the European drive ...

An account of Jung's handling of the transference between psychologist and patient in the light of his conception of the archetypes. Based on the symbolic illustrations in a sixteenth century alchemical text.

Originally published in 1957, this classic work has guided generations of scholars through the arcane mysteries of medieval political theology. Throughout history, the notion of two bodies has permitted the postmortem continuity of monarch and monarchy, as epitomized by the statement, “The king is dead. Long live the king.” In The King’s Two Bodies, Ernst Kantorowicz traces the historical dilemma posed by the “King’s two bodies”—the body natural and the body politic—back to the Mi...

Aquinas at Prayer draws attention to important aspects of Aquinas's life and work which have been all too often overlooked or forgotten.Today Aquinas is almost exclusively regarded as an outstanding scholastic philosopher and theologian. But what is little known is that Aquinas was, first and last, a teacher of the Bible - a Master of the Sacred Page. Moreover there is a distinctly mystical character to his theology. And, as a writer, he was not only a poe...

Jung’s landmark account of the connections between alchemy, its symbolism, the collective unconscious, and modern psychologyPsychology and Alchemy is one of Jung’s most influential works. In a prefatory note, he says: “In this present study of alchemy I have taken a particular example of symbol-formation, extending in all over some seventeen centuries, and have subjected it to intensive examination, linking it at the same time with an actual series of drea...

Best-selling author Umberto Eco's latest work unlocks the riddles of history in an exploration of the "linguistics of the lunatic," stories told by scholars, scientists, poets, fanatics, and ordinary people in order to make sense of the world. Exploring the "Force of the False," Eco uncovers layers of mistakes that have shaped human history, such as Columbus's assumption that the world was much smaller than it is, leading him to seek out a quick route to the East via the West and thus fort...

In the final decades of the fifteenth-century, the European musical world was shaken to its foundations by the onset of a veritable culture war on the art of polyphony. Now in paperback, The Crisis of Music in Early Modern**Europe tells the story of this cultural upheaval, drawing on a wide range of little-known texts and documents, and weaving them together in a narrative that takes the reader on an eventful musical journey through early-modern Europe.

Private reflections of the Roman Catholic pope elevated to sainthood, collected from journals spanning from 1962 to 2003.As the head of the Roman Catholic Church from 1978 until his death in 2005, Pope John Paul II shaped his times in ways few other popes could claim. This powerful and now sainted leader made headlines by conferring with heads of state, inspiring and leading fellow Catholics and other Christians, and building the foundations for making Rome the head...