The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400–1200 (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature, Series Number 34) - Hardcover

Carruthers, Mary

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521582326 ISBN 13: 9780521582322

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 1998

Synopsis

A companion to Mary Carruthers' earlier study of memory in medieval culture, The Book of Memory, this book, The Craft of Thought, examines medieval monastic meditation as a discipline for making thoughts, and discusses its influence on literature, art, and architecture, deriving examples from a variety of late antique and medieval sources, with excursions into modern architectural memorials. The study emphasizes meditation as an act of literary composition or invention, the techniques of which notably involved both words and making mental "pictures" for thinking and composing.

About this title

About the Author:

Mary Carruthers is the author of The Craft of Thought (Cambridge 1998) and The Medieval Craft of Memory (University of Pennsylvania 2002) as well as of The Book of Memory (1990 and 2008). She divides her time between New York City and Oxford, where she holds the positions of Remarque Professor of Literature at New York University and Fellow of All Souls College.

Review:

'... a wide-ranging text ... illuminating for scholars of classical and medieval history, art history, and literature, as well as the more obvious disciplines of theology and rhetoric.' Natalie Grinnell, Envoi

'... Carruthers puts forward at a quick pace, a wealth of intuitions and ideas about the function of pictures which are liable to stimulate further research in the fields both of classics and of medieval studies.' Classical World

'This is a vigorous and learned book.' David Griffith, Expository Times

'... The Craft of Thought is an important contribution to our understanding of memory, the medieval world, and how our image of the world today both converges and diverges from our past. By showing how medieval monastic meditation influences literature, art, and architecture ... [the book] underscores the importance of memory in bringing these disparate disciplines together as a unitary whole. Remarkable and learned ... [this] is a book to be read and recollected again and again.' Lee Trepanier, VoegelinView (www.voegelinview.com)

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0521582326
• ISBN 13: 9780521582322
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 426