Böcker utgivna av University of Notre Dame Press

Toward an Alternative Theology: Confessions of a Non-Dualist Christian is the spiritual and intellectual autobiography of Sara Grant, a Roman Catholic Scottish nun, who, until her death in 2000, established herself as one of the leading twentieth-century figures in Indian Christian theology and the contemplative life. In this slim volume, Grant recounts her search not only for God, but for a right understanding of God, as well as for a way of rethinking Christian teachings on the mystery of God¿s relation to the world that could overcome widespread popular dualisms.Grant¿s odyssey begins with experiences from her childhood and follows her entrance into the novitiate of the Society of the Sacred Heart, where she began an intensive study of Aquinas. After training in classics and philosophy at Oxford University, Grant traveled to India, where she spent the remainder of her life, first as a professor of philosophy at Sophia College, Bombay, and later in Pune in the dual role of professor at Jnana-Deepa-Vidyapeeth and head of a Christian monastic community.Grant studied Sanskrit and became an expert on Sankara (ca. 700 c.e.), the authoritative Hindu exponent of the doctrine of non-duality. Reading Aquinas and Sankara in a method of mutual illumination led Grant to discover that the non-dualistic, or advaitic, insight was compatible with Christian theology, and in fact is present, though underdeveloped, in all authentic Christian doctrine.Appearing for the first time in the United States, this engrossing book eloquently recounts the life of a remarkable woman and shows how Christian theology and spirituality can be enriched by encountering the experiences and concepts of advaita. This updated edition includes a new introduction by Bradley J. Malkovsky.

In The disintegrating conscience and the decline of modernity, Smith takes as his starting point Jacques Barzun's provocative assertion that "the modern era" is coming to an end. Smith considers the question of decline by focusing on a single theme--conscience--that has been central to much of what has happened in Western politics, law, and religion of the past half-millennium.

This book probes the intersection of the beautiful and the ugly, offering a systematic framework to understand, interpret, and evaluate how ugliness can contribute to beautiful art.Many great artworks include elements of ugliness: repugnant content, disproportionate forms, unresolved dissonance, and unintegrated parts. Mark William Roche¿s authoritative monograph Beautiful Ugliness: Christianity, Modernity, and the Arts challenges current practices of the dominant aesthetic schools by exploring the role of ugliness in art and literature. Roche offers a comprehensive and unique framework that integrates philosophical and theological reflection, intellectual-historical analysis, and interpretations of a large number of works from the arts. The study is driven by the recognition that, though ugliness is usually understood as the opposite of beauty, ugliness nonetheless contributes significantly to the beauty of many artworks.Roche¿s analysis unfolds in three parts. The first offers a refreshing conceptual analysis of ugliness in art. The second considers the history of ugliness in art and literature, with special attention to its role in Christian art and its central place in modern and contemporary art. The third synthesizes earlier material, offering a taxonomy of beautiful ugliness derived from Hegelian philosophical categories. Roche mesmerizes the reader with an extraordinary range of literary scholarship and expertise, with a particular focus on English, Latin, and German literature, and with a broad range of analyzed phenomena, including fine arts, architecture, and music.Including 63 color illustrations, Beautiful Ugliness will draw in readers from multiple disciplines as well as those from beyond the academy who wish to make sense of today¿s complex art world.

Tamara Feinstein investigates the bloody Shining Path conflict¿s effect on the legal Left in late-twentieth-century Peru, illustrating the catastrophic impact state and insurgent violence can have on the growth and resilience of democratic political actors during times of war.In this engaging historical study, Tamara Feinstein chronicles the late-twentieth-century Shining Path conflict and argues that it significantly contributed to the rupture and disintegration of the noninsurgent legal Left in Peru by deepening preexisting divisions and eradicating an entire generation of leaders. Using a combination of oral histories, archival documents, contemporary media accounts, and participant observation of commemorations, Feinstein maps the trajectory of the Peruvian Left¿s rise and fall by analyzing two emblematic human rights cases that occurred at the Left¿s zenith and nadir: the state-based violence of the 1986 Lima prison massacres and the 1992 Shining Path assassination of leftist shantytown leader María Elena Moyano. The lessons found in The Fate of Peruvian Democracy reach beyond Peru to connect with other Latin American countries. Perüs story illustrates the difficulties of accumulating political force during times of violence, underscores how struggles for self-defense can complicate ideological stances on violence, and helps explain the unevenness of the resurgence of the Left (the so-called ¿pink tide¿) in Latin America in the twenty-first century. The book contributes to debates on memory and human rights in Peru and Latin America where divisions over how to remember the war retraced the fault lines of earlier debates over democracy and violence.

"In God without the Idea of Evil, well-known French Catholic theologian Jean-Miguel Garrigues, O.P., seeks to rise above the apparent contradiction of faith and the existence of evil, suffering, and death. Originally published in France as Dieu sans idâee du mal in 1982, a revised second edition came out in 1990, and in 2016 the book was released again with a foreword by Cardinal Christoph Schèonborn, which serves as the basis for the present translation. At its heart, this book contemplates the mystery of our election by God, which is expressed in the very fact of our existence. Garrigues addresses compelling theological topics-the concept of moral evil, the "redemptive charity" of Christ, the "journey" of human liberty, and the process of "nature becoming history"-with precise, poetically charged language that remains accessible. Garrigues makes a passionate defense of the innocence of God in the face of moral evil. By enveloping us in his look, as Cardinal Schèonborn writes in the foreword, "God encounters us in the very gift of being that he bestows upon us, and his eyes do not see our sin." The book invites us to rediscover in the eyes of Jesus the eternal, continually renewed charm of the divine gaze. We are illumined and inspired by a vision of God who "does not see us through the evil in us," but rather loves us from the infinite depths of his creative charity"--

In this timely book, an interdisciplinary group of scholars investigates the recent resurfacing of White Christian nationalism and racism in populist movements across the globe.Religion, Populism, and Modernity examines the recent rise of White Christian nationalism in Europe and the United States, focusing on how right-wing populist leaders and groups have mobilized racist and xenophobic rhetoric in their bids for political power. As the contributors to this volume show, this mobilization is deeply rooted in the broader structures of western modernity and as such requires an intersectional analysis that considers race, gender, ethnicity, nationalism, and religion together. The contributors explore a number of case studies, including White nationalism in the United States among both evangelicals and Catholics, anti- and philosemitism in Poland, the Far Right party Alternative for Germany, Islamophobia in Norway and France, and the entanglement of climate change opposition in right-wing parties throughout Europe. By extending the scope of these essays beyond Trump and Brexit, the contributors remind us that these two events are not exceptions to the rule of the normal functioning of liberal democracies. Rather, they are in fact but recent examples of long-standing trends in Europe and the United States. As the editors to the volume contend, confronting these issues requires that we not only unearth their historical precedents but also imagine futures that point to new ways of being beyond them.Contributors: Atalia Omer, Joshua Lupo, Philip Gorski, Jason A. Springs, R. Scott Appleby, Richard Amesbury, Geneviève Zubrzycki, Yolande Jansen, Jasmijn Leeuwenkamp, Sindre Bangstad, and Ebrahim Moosa.

In this timely book, an interdisciplinary group of scholars investigates the recent resurfacing of White Christian nationalism and racism in populist movements across the globe.Religion, Populism, and Modernity examines the recent rise of White Christian nationalism in Europe and the United States, focusing on how right-wing populist leaders and groups have mobilized racist and xenophobic rhetoric in their bids for political power. As the contributors to this volume show, this mobilization is deeply rooted in the broader structures of western modernity and as such requires an intersectional analysis that considers race, gender, ethnicity, nationalism, and religion together. The contributors explore a number of case studies, including White nationalism in the United States among both evangelicals and Catholics, anti- and philosemitism in Poland, the Far Right party Alternative for Germany, Islamophobia in Norway and France, and the entanglement of climate change opposition in right-wing parties throughout Europe. By extending the scope of these essays beyond Trump and Brexit, the contributors remind us that these two events are not exceptions to the rule of the normal functioning of liberal democracies. Rather, they are in fact but recent examples of long-standing trends in Europe and the United States. As the editors to the volume contend, confronting these issues requires that we not only unearth their historical precedents but also imagine futures that point to new ways of being beyond them.Contributors: Atalia Omer, Joshua Lupo, Philip Gorski, Jason A. Springs, R. Scott Appleby, Richard Amesbury, Geneviève Zubrzycki, Geneviève Zubrzycki, Yolande Jansen, Jasmijn Leeuwenkamp, Sindre Bangstad, and Ebrahim Moosa.

The treatise De gratia was written in 474 by Faustus, bishop of Riez in southern Gaul, against the predestinarian doctrine of Lucidus, a Gallic priest. The present study reexamines that treatise. The need for such a reexamination becomes clear as one reads the many and varied, and often polemical, estimates of Faustus's doctrinal orthodoxy. It is hoped that in the course of such study historical, theological, and literary in its scope-we will be better equipped to evaluate the many interpretations of Faustus. Perhaps, too, we will be able to shed some helpful new light on the ways in which Augustinian teachings on grace were received in Gaul between St. Augustine's death in 430 and the so-called second council of Orange in 529. In these introductory remarks we will survey in brief scope the reception accorded the De gratia in the history of Christian thought.At the end of his study of the history of criticism of Faustus, Tibiletti alludes briefly to the important revision that has taken place in modern scholarship on Pelagius. If moderns are now able to regard Pelagius with some equanimity, even if not with full approbation, there is all the more reason to undertake a profound historical and philological reexamination of Faustus of Riez. In this way his authentic voice can be heard, apart from the accretions of later accusations. The following study does not pretend to be the profound historical and philological reexamination called for, but I hope that it will begin to clarify the direction of such inquiry. It will be the first work devoted entirely to an understanding of the De gratia in its historical, literary, and theological contexts. Having undertaken this task, we will be rewarded with a more precise understanding of the reception of Augustinianism in fifth-century Gaul.

This volume is a collection of eight of the papers presented at The First Biennial Conference of The Latin American Consortium, entitled Narrative Practices and Cultural Discourse, held in 1990 at the University of Notre Dame. Taking a specific Latin American focus, the essays test an eclectic array of works in Latin American narrative literature against concepts and issues in poststructuralist critical theory.The contributors cross many regional, cultural, and disciplinary boundaries. Their essays encompass such timely issues as the possible correlations among postructuralism, postindustrialism, postmodernism, postcolonialism, and the Latin American literary postboom, as well as how Latin American writing has both responded to and participated in these socio-cultural developments. One commonality exists among all the essays: none of them treat works of Latin American narrative literature independent of the historical, critical, and theoretical discourses that have built up around them.By initiating a more direct dialogue among critical theorists, Latin American writers and intellectuals, and scholars of Latin American culture and society, this stimulating collection strive to promote a more accurate assessment and realistic articulation of the significance of Latin American literature, and of the cultural impact its narratives have on local, national, and international levels.Contributors: John Beverley, Fernando Coronil, Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria, Ricardo Gutiérrez Mouat, Fredric Jameson, Amy Kaminsky, Mary Louise Pratt, Luisa Valenzuela.

The body of this book is divided into two parts. The first part gives texts of the seven major papers presented at the Conference, together with reports of discussions these engendered among the sixty participants. Part II provides documents concerning Church and culture since Vatican II.

An even-tempered (if rather partisan) critique of the American soul as it exhibits itself on the different fronts of our ``culture war.'' Neuhaus (Unsecular America, 1986, etc.) traces the traumas of our social and political life back to their ontological roots and supplies a prognosis that will undoubtedly scandalize as many as it sways. A Catholic priest and scholar who presides over the Institute of Religion and Public Life, Neuhaus has concentrated his sociological efforts for some years now on the intersection between the political and the spiritual in American life. In doing so, he has run counter to prevailing notions of secularism--held only, he maintains, by an elite minority--that would, he says, collapse all religious impulses into an entirely private realm. Neuhaus skips over the more obvious examples of conflict--school prayer, Nativity scenes in public parks, etc.--and attempts in more theoretical terms to show that liberal democracy (in its American incarnation) requires a religious foundation if it is to succeed as a unifying social force. He draws on his experiences with the civil-rights movement to show how a religious vocabulary can be used--as it was by Martin Luther King--to bring together even the most mutually antagonistic groups. One might question Neuhaus's optimism in light of the increasing lack of cohesion in most mainline churches today, and parts of his argument display an inclination toward the sort of ``throne-and-altar'' alliance that has bedeviled European reactionaries for two hundred years--but his analysis of the seeming void around which the ``secular'' consensus is built, and the fragility of the social structures that depend upon that consensus, is challenging, prescient, and ominous. And his chapters on the abortion issue, while hardly impartial, are remarkably free of the usual cant. A trifle glib and overconfident, Neuhaus's tone can irritate. His thesis, however, is original enough to compel attention and forceful enough to provoke thought. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

In this fascinating biography of Louis Massignon, Mary Louise Gude introduces a new audience to the eminent French Orientalist who dominated the field of Islamic studies for over 60 years. Drawn from Massignon's own writings as well as other primary sources, this unique biography also includes theological discussions of Massignon's intellectual development and writings. Today Massignon's work continues to engage scholars and students of Islam and interfaith relations, and, as a bridge-builder between Christianity and Islam, his far-reaching influence is unequaled. Louis Massignon was a pivotal figure in awakening Western interest in Islamic studies, and although his work is well-known to students of Islam or French history, he is relatively unknown in the English-speaking world. Now in this fascinating biography Mary Louise Gude introduces a new audience to the eminent French Orientalist who dominated the field of Islamic studies for over 60 years. This account covers many aspects of Massignon's rich and complex life, beginning with his birth in 1883 in Paris until his death in 1962, and reveals how Massignon's extraordinary life unfolded during a time when relations between Islam and the West changed radically. Gude discusses how Massignon first discovered the Muslim world in the nineteenth century (the era of European colonial imperialism) and lived to witness the major events that reshaped Islam in the first half of the twentieth century, including the creation of the Arab states after World War I, the creation of Israel and the subsequent Arab-Israeli War of 1948, and the independence of Algeria in 1962. Drawn from Massignon's own writings as well as other primary and secondary sources, this unique biography also includes theological discussions of Massignon's intellectual development and writings. Gude reveals Massignon to be a believer who rediscovered Christianity through Islam; a mystic involved in the political realities of his day; and an Islamophile who remained quintessentially French. What emerges overall is the story of a passionate, but ultimately elusive, man whose professional and personal commitments were inseparable. Today Massignon's work continues to engage scholars and students of Islam and interfaith relations, and, as a bridge-builder between Christianity and Islam, his far-reaching influence is unequaled.

This penetrating study makes a case for the centrality of the concept of representation (Stellvertretung) in Hans Urs von Balthasar¿s theological project.How is it possible for Christ to act in the place of humanity? In Hans Urs von Balthasar¿s Theology of Representation, Jacob Lett broaches this perplexing soteriological question and offers the first book-length analysis of Balthasar¿s theology of representation (Stellvertretung). Lett¿s study shows how Balthasar rehabilitates the category of representation by developing it in relationship to the central mysteries of the Christian faith: concerned by the lack of metaphysical and theological foundations for understanding the question above, Balthasar ultimately grounds representation in the trinitarian life of God, making ¿action in the place of the other¿ central to divine and creaturely being. Lett not only articulates the centrality of representation to Balthasar¿s theological project but also demonstrates that Balthasar¿s theology of representation has the potential to reshape discussions in the fields of soteriology, Christology, trinitarian theology, anthropology, and ecclesiology.This work covers a wide range of themes in Balthasar¿s theology, including placial and spatial metaphors, a post-Chalcedonian Christology of Christ¿s two wills, and theories of drama. This book is also a text of significant comparative range: Lett considers Balthasar¿s key interlocutors (Gregory of Nyssa, Maximus, Aquinas, Przywara, Ulrich, Barth) and expands this base to include voices beyond those typically found in Balthasarian scholarship, including Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Dorothee Sölle. The overall result is a deeply probing presentation of one of Balthasar¿s most significant contributions to contemporary theology.

"This volume brings into conversation two major moral traditions in the social sciences and humanities that offer common areas for understanding, interpreting, and transforming the world. Over the last decade, moral theologians who work on issues of poverty, social justice, human rights, and political institutions have been finding inspiration in the capability approach (CA). Conversely, social scientists who have been working on issues of poverty and social justice from a CA perspective have been finding elements in the Catholic social tradition (CST) to overcome some of the limitations of the CA, such as its vagueness regarding what counts as a valuable human life and its strong individual focus. Integral Human Development brings together for the first time social scientists and theologians in dialogue over their respective uses of CST and CA. The contributors discuss what their mutual grounds are, where they diverge, and where common areas of collaboration and transformative action can be found. The contributors offer a critical analysis of CA from the perspective of theology. They also provide an original account of CST. The book offers a broader historical, biblical, social, economic, political, and ecological understanding of CST than that which is currently available in the CST literature. The book will interest students and practitioners in global affairs, development studies, or the social sciences who seek to better understand the Catholic tradition and its social teachings and what they can offer to address current socio-environmental challenges." --

Building on the insights of the ressourcement theology of grace, this sophisticated theological aesthetics offers a fresh vision of the doctrine of creation through a consideration of the beauty of time. Conventional eschatological accounts of life after death tend to emphasize the discontinuity between earthly life and the hereafter: whereas this life is subject to the contingencies of time, life after death is characterized by a stolid eternity. In contrast to this standard view, John E. Thiel's Now and Forever articulates a Catholic eschatology in which earthly life and heavenly life are seen as gracefully continuous. This account offers a reconceptualization of time, which, Thiel argues, is best understood as the sacramental medium of God's grace to creation. Thiel's project thus attempts to rescue time from its Platonically negative resonance in the doctrine of creation. Rather than viewing time as the ambiance of sinful dissolution, Thiel argues for a Christian vision of time's beauty, and so explicitly develops an aesthetics that views time as a creaturely reflection of God's own Trinitarian life. This thesis proceeds from the assumption that all time is eschatological time and is thus guided by attention to the temporality implicit in the virtue of hope, with its orientation toward a fulfilled future that culminates in resurrected life. This interpretation of the beauty of eschatological time in its widest expanse presses further the insight of ressourcement theology that grace is everywhere, while appreciating how time's graceful beauty manifests itself in the diversity of temporal moments, human communities, and most fully in the heavenly communion of the saints.

This book provides the first sustained philosophical treatment of Pope Francis's Laudato Si' and articulates a theology of creation to recover our place within the cosmos.In the encyclical Laudato Si', Pope Francis discerns beneath the imminent threat of ecological catastrophe an existential affliction of the human person, who is lost in the cosmos, increasingly alienated from self, others, nature, and God. Pope Francis suggests that one must reimagine humanity's place in the created cosmos. In this ambitious and distinctive contribution to theological aesthetics, Thomas Hibbs provides the basis for just such a recovery, working from Laudato Si' to develop a philosophical and theological diagnosis of our ecological dislocation, a narrative account of the sources of the crisis, and a vision of the way forward.Through a critical engagement with the artistic theory of Jacques Maritain, Hibbs shows how certain strains of modern art both capture our alienation and anticipate visions of recovered harmony among persons, nature, and God. In the second half of the book, in an attempt to fulfill Pope Francis's plea for an "aesthetic education" and to apply and test Maritain's theory, Hibbs examines the work of poets and painters. He analyzes the work of poets Robinson Jeffers and William Everson, and considers painters Georges Roualt, a friend to Maritain, and Makoto Fujimura, whose notion of "culture care" overlaps in suggestive ways with Francis's notion of integral ecology.Throughout this tour de force, Hibbs calls for a commitment to an "ecological poetics," a project that responds to the crisis of our times by taking poets and painters as seriously as philosophers and theologians.

Warne¿s original study provides an insightful analysis of the role of contemplation and creation in the thought of Josef Pieper, illustrating the importance of this practice to earthly happiness and human flourishing.What is the relationship between creation, contemplation, human flourishing, and moral development? Nathaniel Warne¿s Josef Pieper on the Spiritual Life offers a sophisticated answer to this question through a systematic analysis of philosopher Josef Pieper¿s (1904¿1997) thought. Warne¿s examination centers on the role of contemplation and creation in Pieper¿s thinking, arguing that contemplation of the created order is a key feature of earthly happiness. By emphasizing the importance of contemplation, Pieper illustrates the deep interconnections between ethics, creation, and spirituality. For Warne, to posit a binary between the contemplative life and active life creates a false dichotomy. Following Pieper, Warne claims that theology and spirituality cannot be bracketed from ethics and social action¿indeed, our lived experience in the world blurs the lines between these practices. Contemplation and action are closer together than are typically assumed, and they have important implications for both our spiritual development and our engagement with the world around us. Ultimately, Warne¿s emphasis on creation and contemplation represents an attempt to resist a view of ethics and the spiritual life that is divorced from our environment. In response to this view, Warne argues that we need a renewed sense that creation and place are important for self-understanding. Contemplation of creation is, fundamentally, a form of communion with God¿we thus need a more robust sense of how ethics and politics are rooted in God¿s creative action. Taking Pieper as a guide, Warne¿s study helps to deepen our thinking about these connections.

"For decades, arguments in favor of school choice have largely been advanced on the basis of utility or outcome rather than social justice and human dignity. The Case for Parental Choice: God, Family, and Educational Liberty offers a compelling and humanitarian alternative. This volume contains an edited collection of essays by John E. Coons, a visionary legal scholar and ardent supporter of what is perhaps best described as a social justice case for parental school choice. Few have written more prodigiously or prophetically about the need to give parents-particularly poor parents-power over their children's schooling. Coons has been an advocate of school choice for over sixty years, and indeed remains one of the most articulate proponents of a case for school choice that promotes both low-income parents and civic engagement, as opposed to mere efficiency or achievement. His is a distinctively Catholic voice that brings powerful normative arguments to debates that far too often get bogged down in disputes about cost savings and test scores. The essays collected herein treat a wide variety of topics, including the relationship between school choice and individual autonomy; the implications of American educational policy for social justice, equality, and community; the impact of public schooling on low-income families; and the religious implications of school choice. Together, these pieces make for a wide-ranging and morally compelling case for parental choice in children's schooling"--

This study provides a compelling account of the major works of Henri de Lubac, one of the most influential theologians of the twentieth century, and argues that soteriology provides a lens through which their inner unity can be discerned.The writings of Henri de Lubac have left an indelible mark on Catholic theology, preparing the ground for, giving shape to, and explaining the seminal event of twentieth-century Catholicism: the Second Vatican Council. Like the Council itself, though, de Lubac remains a contested figure, difficult to classify.Salvation in Henri de Lubac presents an overview of de Lubac¿s major works in light of his own statements that a mystical vision animated them all. De Lubac¿s mystical theology hinges upon a vision of salvation, understood as humanity¿s incorporation into the triune God through the cross and resurrection of the incarnate Christ. From his writings on the supernatural and theological epistemology, to his treatments of the spiritual interpretation of Scripture, ecclesiology, sacramental theology, and the theology of history, the mystery of the cross looms large, gathering these disparate topics into one focal center while also allowing their distinct contours to remain. By attending to de Lubac¿s work in this light, Eugene R. Schlesinger brings important themes from French language scholarship into the English-speaking conversation and clarifies the nature of de Lubac¿s ressourcement. It is not a method, nor a sensibility, but the outgrowth of a conviction: in the mystery of Christ a definitive and unsurpassable gift has been given, one that constitutes the meaning of the world and its history, one whose riches can never be exhausted. Schlesinger claims that unless we understand de Lubac and his work in light of his own motivations and emphases, we risk distorting his contribution, reducing him to a proxy in the struggle for post-conciliar Catholic self-definition.

These essays will interest readers familiar with the work of Nobel Prize-winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and are a great starting point for those eager for an introduction to the great Russian's work.When people think of Russia today, they tend to gravitate toward images of Soviet domination or, more recently, Vladimir Putin's war against Ukraine. The reality, however, is that, despite Russia's political failures, its rich history of culture, religion, and philosophical reflection--even during the darkest days of the Gulag--have been a deposit of wisdom for American artists, religious thinkers, and political philosophers probing what it means to be human in America. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn stands out as the key figure in this conversation, as both a Russian literary giant and an exile from Russia living in America for two decades. This anthology reconsiders Solzhenitsyn's work from a variety of perspectives--his faith, his politics, and the influences and context of his literature--to provide a prophetic vision for our current national confusion over universal ideals.In Solzhenitsyn and American Culture: The Russian Soul in the West, David P. Deavel and Jessica Hooten Wilson have collected essays from the foremost scholars and thinkers of comparative studies who have been tracking what Americans have borrowed and learned from Solzhenitsyn and his fellow Russians. The book offers a consideration of what we have in common--the truth, goodness, and beauty America has drawn from Russian culture and from masters such as Solzhenitsyn--and will suggest to readers what we can still learn and what we must preserve. The last section expands the book's theme and reach by examining the impact of other notable Russian authors, including Pushkin, Dostoevsky, and Gogol.Contributors: David P. Deavel, Jessica Hooten Wilson, Nathan Nielson, Eugene Vodolazkin, David Walsh, Matthew Lee Miller, Ralph C. Wood, Gary Saul Morson, Edward E. Ericson, Jr., Micah Mattix, Joseph Pearce, James F. Pontuso, Daniel J. Mahoney, William Jason Wallace, Lee Trepanier, Peter Leithart, Dale Peterson, Julianna Leachman, Walter G. Moss, and Jacob Howland.

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.

The central metaphor of Christ as the spiritual physician, operative within late medieval Christianity as a whole, was animated in particular ways within hospitals. These institutions aimed to care for both body and spirit, understood as inextricable from each other. Some of the earliest extended treatments of Christus medicus appear in Augustine, who draws an analogy between Christ's Passion and the bitter medicine of the physician: "Do not fear to drink. For to dispel your fear the physician drank first, that is, the Lord drank first the bitterness of the Passion." Hence the logically related image of the priest as a spiritual physician with authority derived from Christ became familiar in a range of medieval religious texts, codified in a decree of the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215: "The priest shall be discerning and prudent, so that like a skilled doctor he may pour wine and oil over the wounds of the injured one. Let him carefully inquire about the circumstances of both the sinner and the sin, so that he may prudently discern what sort of advice he ought to give and what remedy to apply, using various means to heal the sick person." The same Council also banned clerics in major orders from surgery, among other activities involving bloodshed. Jeremy J. Citrome argues that even as priests were barred from operating on bodies, surgery became prevalent as an image for confession in pastoral literature after 1215: "Metaphors of surgery become the key rhetorical device through which subsequent pastoral writers explain spiritual health in this reinforced confessional context, and the surgeon, their foremost model for the perfect confessor." Daniel McCann has also demonstrated the double valence of the Christus medicus image underpinning penitential practice, and by extension, lay devotional reading in late medieval England. On the one hand, Christ's own sufferings are presented as curative for the penitent, as in the passage from Augustine cited above. On the other hand, Christ is a physician who must inflict wounds in order to heal. In his study of the "therapeutic aspects of religious texts," McCann shows how vernacular devotional texts like the Prick of Conscience and the Penitential Psalms function therapeutically "to evoke emotions intense enough to enable salus animae, or the health of the soul" in readers. Although I will be looking at different texts from McCann, the concept of "soul-health" remains crucial throughout. In the space of the hospital, an institution focused on caring for the physically vulnerable while striving, through prayer, to bring spiritual health to its patrons and its diverse community, bodily and spiritual health were always intertwined. The priest's role as spiritual healer offering Christ's salutary suffering to the penitent became heightened and was textualized in diverse ways. Although relatively few records survive from English hospitals of what we would today call medical care, hospitals played an important role in the late medieval health care system. During this period, most health care took place in the home, with women as the primary caregivers. As Katharine Park notes, women served as "the first line of defense against illness and as those primarily entrusted, in the normative context of the home, with the ongoing management of health." People with complex illnesses or injuries needing specialized care did not generally resort to hospitals: if they had the resources, they hired private doctors to come to their homes. Thus English hospitals with a mandate to care for sick patients were mainly serving those without such resources: the poor, the indigent, those shunned by family. Although some hospital libraries contained medical texts, we have relatively few records of physicians attending the sick or injured in English hospitals prior to the sixteenth century. Yet Roberta Gilchrist's recent archaeological work on hospitals and monastic infirmaries has uncovered "technologies of healing" that included "preventative care for the body, medical interventions such as surgery and bone-setting, the provision of prosthetics and specialist medicines." Thus, limited recorded evidence for medical care in hospitals need not mean that such care was unavailable but rather that those providing it were not university-trained "physicians." Carers were generally highly skilled nurses: I detail the extent of their activities below. Together with the care of their bodies, hospital patients received the spiritual comfort of seeing the mass daily and receiving confession and other sacraments. In the interest of promoting spiritual health, later medieval hospital architecture developed to enable patients to see the mass celebrated. Large institutions for the sick poor (including St. Leonard's, York and St. Bartholomew's, London) typically situated a large open infirmary hall with a chapel just to the east, allowing patients to see the Eucharist elevated and listen to the service, even if they were too weak to rise from their beds. The building plans of these two hospitals were fairly standard as well, employing central space such as a "close, cloister, quadrangle or courtyard as their means of central planning." The compound's other buildings radiated around these, including separate dormitories for brothers and sisters and in larger hospitals, multiple chapels staffed by different chaplains. These compounds were in turn surrounded by workshops of artisans such as bakers and masons who provided goods and services to residents. Running water was recognized as de rigueur for maintaining health, and records of water management survive for St. Bartholomew's and St. Mark's. In 1297, St. Bartholomew's was allowed to cover with wood and stone a foul-smelling watercourse running through the hospital; St. Mark's received piped water from springs outside of Bristol. Along with St. Mary's Abbey, St. Leonard's, York was the only local institution to have its drain fully encased in stone.