Aesthetics and the incarnation in early medieval Britain : materiality and the flesh of the word /
Aesthetics and the incarnation in early medieval Britain :: materiality and the flesh of the word /

This rich study takes Insular art on its own terms, revealing a distinctive and unorthodox theology that will inevitably change how scholars view the long arc of English piety and the English literary tradition. Drawing on a wide range of critical methodologies, Aesthetics and the Incarnation in Ear...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Beechy, Tiffany (Author)
Format: Electronic eBook
Language:English
Published: Notre Dame, Indiana : University of Notre Dame, [2023]
Subjects:
To 1500
Aesthetics.
Christian art and symbolism > British Isles > Medieval, 500-1500.
Material culture > British Isles > History > To 1500.
Religion and culture > British Isles > History.
Religion et culture > Britanniques, Îles > Histoire.
HISTORY / Europe / Great Britain / Middle Ages (449-1066)
Aesthetics
Christian art and symbolism > Medieval
Material culture
Religion and culture
Europe > British Isles
Electronic books.
History
Online Access:DE-862
DE-863
Summary:This rich study takes Insular art on its own terms, revealing a distinctive and unorthodox theology that will inevitably change how scholars view the long arc of English piety and the English literary tradition. Drawing on a wide range of critical methodologies, Aesthetics and the Incarnation in Early Medieval Britain treats this era as a "contact zone" of cultural clash and exchange, where Christianity encountered a rich amalgam of practices and attitudes, particularly regarding the sensible realm. Tiffany Beechy illustrates how local cultures, including the Irish learned tradition, received the "Word that was made flesh", the central figure of Christian doctrine, in distinctive ways: the Word, for example, was verbal, related to words and signs, and was not at all ineffable. Likewise, the Word was often poetic --an enigma-- and its powerful presence was not only hinted at (as St. Augustine would have it) but manifest in the mouth or on the page. Beechy examines how these Insular traditions received and expressed a distinctly iterable Incarnation. Often disavowed and condemned by orthodox authorities, this was in large part an implicit theology, expressed or embodied in form (such as art, compilation, or metaphor) rather than in treatises. Beechy demonstrates how these forms drew on various authorities especially important to Britain --Bede, Gregory the Great, and Isidore most prominent among them. Beechy's study provides a prehistory in the English literary tradition for the better-known experimental poetics of Middle English devotion. The book is unusual in the diversity of its primary material, which includes visual art, including the Book of Kells; obscure and often cursorily treated texts such as Adamnán's De locis sanctis ('On the Holy lands"); and the difficult esoterica of the wisdom tradition.
Item Description:Description based upon print version of record.
Physical Description:1 online resource (xviii, 319 pages) : illustrations (some color)
Bibliography:Includes bibliographical references (pages 295-313) and index.
ISBN:0268205140
9780268205171
0268205175
9780268205140

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