Description
Book SynopsisFocusing on saintly human bodies as relics, animated icons, and performers of the holy in hagiography, this book analyzes how Christians in late antiquity saw the material world with new eyes as a medium for the disclosure of the divine in the earthly realm.
Trade Review"
The Corporeal Imagination is a thoughtful, sophisticated, and fascinating book. It is important and delightful reading, a skillful interpretation that makes vivid a central problematic on which Christian belief and practice depend, namely, the simultaneous establishment of the nonnegotiable difference of matter and the holy and the perennial urge to bring them as close together as possible, yet without collapsing one into the other." *
Journal of Religion *
"[Cox Miller's] probings are meticulous, provocative, and incisive. To read this book is to have one's own viewing turned inside out." *
Theological Studies *
"A highly original contribution to the history of Christianity as well as to the study of religion. Eloquent and learned, this book offers many new insights and models for reflection.
The Corporeal Imagination will appeal to scholars of religion, theologians, historians of late antiquity, and historians of art." * J. Rebecca Lyman, Professor Emerita, Church Divinity School of the Pacific *
Table of ContentsIntroduction
Chapter One: Bodies and Selves
Chapter Two: Bodies in Fragments
Chapter Three: Dazzling Bodies
Chapter Four: Bodies and Spectacles
Chapter Five: Ambiguous Bodies
Chapter Six: Subtle Bodies
Chapter Seven: Animated Bodies and Icons
Chapter Eight: Saintly Bodies as Image-Flesh
Chapter Nine: Incongruous Bodies
Conclusion
List of Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
