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Synopsis
The Confessions, Proslogion, and Consolation of Philosophy, like the Divine Comedy, all enact Platonist ascents. Each has a pilgrim figure, guided dialogically on a journey of understanding. Each rises to progressively higher levels of understanding and culminates in a supreme intellectual vision. The higher levels contain and surpass earlier understandings and thereby reconfigure them, but implicitly, for the questing pilgrim rarely stops to reflect on the stages of his ascent. Augustine's conclusions about time in book 11, for example, embrace memory as "time past," but he does not reconsider his account of memory in book 10 from this new perspective. He leaves this task for his reader's meditation, as a spiritual exercise.
In this way, a Platonist ascent generates implied meditative meanings, which scholars have explored only in part. Each work calls us to read forward, on its journey of understanding, and to meditate backwards on the stages of the ascent and the relations between them. Augustine, Anselm, Boethius, and Dante wrote for readers experienced in meditating on the Bible, adept at exploring relations between far distant passages. They designed these works as spiritual exercises for the same kind of reading and meditation.
Understanding the Medieval Meditative Ascent uses literary analysis to discover new philosophical meanings in these works. Clearly written in nontechnical language, its account of their literary structures and of the hidden meanings they generate will inform nonspecialist and specialist alike.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Robert McMahon is professor of English at Louisiana State University. He is the author of Thinking About Literature, The Two Poets of "Paradise Lost," and Augustine's Prayerful Ascent.
PRAISE FOR THE BOOK:
"A stunning and compelling work of remarkable scope, depth, subtlety, and erudition. It aims to illustrate the kind of thinking that would be engendered in--indeed, demanded by--reading these four works as Christian-Platonic ascents.... McMahon makes a very significant contribution to medieval literary and philosophical/theological scholarship."--Todd Breyfogle, University of Denver
"[Refreshes] conceptions of the complexity of these texts and the genius of their writers.... [A] useful example of what can be gained from attention to character, voice and mood as well as from close reading of patterns in these texts."--Mary Agnes Edsall, The Medieval Review
"[An] interesting, original, and well-documented monograph, written for nonspecialists and specialists alike.... [T]his contribution to research on the three texts studied provides a useful account of their literary structures and of the arcane meanings they generate."-- Raymond Cormier, Speculum
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From the Back Cover
"A stunning and compelling work of remarkable scope, depth, subtlety, and erudition. It aims to illustrate the kind of thinking that would be engendered in—indeed, demanded by—reading these four works as Christian-Platonic ascents. . . . McMahon makes a very significant contribution to medieval literary and philosophical/theological scholarship."—Todd Breyfogle, University of Denver
About the Author
Robert McMahon is professor of English at Louisiana State University. He is the author of Thinking About Literature, The Two Poets of "Paradise Lost," and Augustine’s Prayerful Ascent.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherThe Catholic University of America Press
- Publication date2006
- ISBN 10 0813214378
- ISBN 13 9780813214375
- BindingHardcover
- Number of pages284
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Understanding The Medieval Meditative Ascent: Augustine, Anselm, Boethius, & Dante
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Catholic University of America Press, Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A., 2006
ISBN 10: 0813214378
ISBN 13: 9780813214375
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Hardcover
First Edition
Signed
Seller: Foley & Sons Fine Editions, Saskatoon, SK, Canada
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Hardcover. Condition: Near Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good. 1st Edition. Signed and inscribed by the author on the front end paper. Inscription is to Peter Burrell, well known Augustine scholar. First Edition. A hardcover copy which is Fine but for light wear to the extremities. In the complete Dust Jacket, which is somewhat rubbed, lightly creased, some scoring else Very Good. Signed by Author(s). Seller Inventory # 002745
Quantity: 1 available