The Geometry of Love: Space, Time, Mystery And Meaning in an Ordinary Church - Hardcover

Visser, Margaret

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670879193 ISBN 13: 9780670879199

Publisher: Viking, 2001

Synopsis

In her first book MUCH DEPENDS ON DINNER, Margaret Visser elegantly explores the elements of a simple meal and delves into its historical, political and biological meanings. With THE GEOMETRY OF LOVE, she turns to the meaning and memory of a building - starting with the eighth-century church of St Agnes in Rome. Built over the grave of a girl, whose and murder have never been forgotten, this sanctified building is an extraordinary palimpsest with layers of stories - Visser unpicks the histories and fills them with contemporary resonance.

About this title

About the Author

Margaret Visser was born in South Africa, studied at the Sorbonne, and received her doctorate in classics from the University of Toronto. She is the author of three previous books: Much Depends on Dinner; Rituals of Dinner, which won the International Association of Culinary Professionals' Literary Food Writing Award and the Jane Grigson Award; and The Way We Are. She divides her time among Toronto, Barcelona, and southwestern France.

From Publishers Weekly

Visser, described as "an anthropologist of everyday life," has written an enthralling, absorbing and exquisitely researched study of what she calls an "ordinary church." For her subject matter she chose a small but ancient Christian church dedicated to St. Agnes that sits half-buried outside the walls of Rome. Tired of endless tours through world churches in which guides provide lists of facts about dates and architects, Visser aims to bring one small church alive by exploring the stories, meanings and rituals built into each piece of the building. Using the physical layout of the church as the structure for her book, the author takes each staircase, window, fresco, catacomb and chapel as an entryway to fascinating details of mythology, history, early Christian theology, Roman culture and contemporary practice. Visser brings an obvious love and respect for her subject matter and demonstrates remarkable depth in her knowledge of the church's milieu from details on the origins of the halo in religious art, to the techniques of mosaic building, to the historical development of virgin-hero myths. In some ways the author is an archeologist as much as an anthropologist: she digs through layers of history to reveal the depth and breadth of one small building, and peels back layers of meaning in the words and images that adorn it. For the reader, this is rich and thoughtful armchair traveling of the best kind.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Viking
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0670879193
• ISBN 13: 9780670879199
• Binding: Hardcover