Search results for ""university of notre dame press""

Dramatic elements have always been apparent in the historic Christian liturgy. Because the liturgy is a structured action and not merely a verbal narrative, it has historically been both illuminated by and confused with other types of performance, such as theatre and drama. This confusion has been compounded by the fact that much analysis of liturgy has focused on the linguistic and theological aspects of the event and not on its elements of performance. In Do This: Liturgy as Performance, Richard D. McCall presents a systematic approach to the liturgy as event rather than text, using tools made available by contemporary performance theory. McCall follows the rise of dramatic interpretation of the early Christian liturgy from its beginnings through such elements as costumes, interpretative text, and gesture. He then examines the development of performance theory, focusing on the work of Victor Turner and Richard Schechner, and asks if it can be applied to the liturgy. Three views of liturgical theology, especially that of Aiden Kavanagh's, which holds that the liturgy as enacted is liturgy properly presented, set the stage for McCall to construct a definition of liturgy as a mode of performance. In chapter 4, McCall brings Aristotle’s categories in the Poetics to bear on liturgical action. In the final chapter he analyzes an actual liturgical enactment: the celebration of the Mass at Rome in the early eighth century according to the Gregorian Sacramentary and the actions described in Ordo Romanus I. Do This: Liturgy as Performance bridges the work of performance scholarship and liturgical studies in a groundbreaking, interdisciplinary way. The book will interest seminarians and liturgical scholars in a variety of fields, including theology and the arts, early Christian liturgy, Church history, and liturgical theology.

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Traditional surveys of Christian worship have not only stressed the profound changes that occurred in the fragmenting Reformation churches of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but have also primarily focused on the theological understanding, rather than the practice, of worship. Contributors to this unique collection underline the complexity and diversity of late medieval and early modern Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican, and Reformed worship practices in Europe. They examine a range of rites (baptism, marriage, and the Eucharist), elements of worship (visual art, music, prayer texts, rituals), geographic locations (Spain, Geneva, England, Sweden, Germany), and settings (home, school, and church). To illustrate the experience of worship by medieval and early modern laity and clergy, each essay is preceded by selections from key primary source documents being discussed. Contributors reveal that, contrary to the artificial separation of these two time periods by the modern academy, there was actually a great deal of continuity between medieval and early modern liturgical practices. They also demonstrate that political and social pressures were as significant as theological or doctrinal rationales when it came to modifying or retaining traditional practices. Worship in Medieval and Early Modern Europe offers readers a chance to understand better the societal and confessional norms that motivated late medieval and early modern Christians to maintain or change traditional Catholic worship practices. Featuring some of the most outstanding scholars in the field, this volume will be invaluable to academics interested in the Reformation, early modern studies, theology, and liturgical studies, as well as to general readers who wish to learn how their worship life was shaped in the sixteenth century.

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The interpretation of Scripture has depended largely on the view of history held by theologians and exegetes. In Participatory Biblical Exegesis, Matthew Levering examines the changing views of history that distinguish patristic and medieval biblical exegesis from modern historical-critical exegesis. Levering argues for a delicate interpretive balance, in which history is understood both as a process that participates in God’s creative and redemptive presence and as a set of linear moments. He identifies a split between theological and historical interpretations of scripture beginning in the high Middle Ages, considerably earlier than the emergence of historical-critical methods in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Instead, he offers a vision of Scripture that is rooted in the exegetical practice of St. Thomas Aquinas and his sources but embraces historical-critical research as well. Participatory Biblical Exegesis provides an original theological basis for critical exegesis. It integrates the work of contemporary exegetes, philosophers, theologians, and historians to provide a compelling vision of biblical interpretation.

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In this compelling study of two seventeenth-century female mystics, Bo Karen Lee examines the writings of Anna Maria van Schurman and Madame Jeanne Guyon, who, despite different religious formations, came to similar conclusions about the experience of God in contemplative prayer. Van Schurman was born into a Dutch Calvinist family and became a superb scriptural commentator before undergoing a dramatic religious conversion and joining the Labadist community, a Pietistic movement. Guyon was a French layperson whose thought would be identified with Quietism—a spiritual path that was looked upon with suspicion both by the French Catholic Church and by Rome. Lee analyzes and compares the themes of self-denial and self-annihilation in the writings of these two mystics. In van Schurman's case, the focus is on the distinction between scholastic knowledge of God and the intima notitia Dei accessible only by radical self-denial. In Guyon's case, it is on the union with God that is accessible only through a painful self-annihilation. For both authors, Lee demonstrates that the desire for enjoyment of God plays an important role as the engine of the soul's progress away from self-centeredness. The appendices offer facing Latin and English translations of two letters by van Schurman and a selection from her Eukleria.

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Ascetic Culture honors Philip Rousseau’s pathbreaking work on early Christian asceticism in a series of essays exploring how quickly the industrious and imaginative practitioners of asceticism, from the early fourth through the mid-fifth century, adapted the Greco-Roman social, literary, and religious culture in which they had been raised. Far from rejecting the life of the urban centers of the ancient world, they refined and elaborated that life in their libraries, households, and communities. The volume begins with a discussion of Egyptian monastic reading programs and the circulation of texts, especially the hugely influential Life of Antony. A second group of essays engages the topic of disciplinary culture in ascetic spaces such as the monastery, the household, and the city. A third group focuses on the topic of imaginary landscapes and ascetic self-fashioning. Ascetic Culture concludes by surveying the scholarly study of asceticism over the last one hundred and fifty years, arguing that previous generations of scholars have regarded asceticism either as a product of the inner dynamism of early Christianity or as a distortion of its earliest aims. Together, the contributors recognize, reflect upon, and extend the themes explored in Rousseau’s work on early Christianity’s ascetic periphery—a region whose inhabitants reflect in various ways the aspirations of their religion, from the daily to the otherworldly.

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This collection of essays provides new perspectives on the nature of character and moral education by utilizing insights from the disciplines of moral psychology, moral philosophy, and education. The volume draws from personality and developmental research as well as educational and ethical theory. Character Psychology and Character Education distinguishes itself by bringing moral philosophers, who believe that ethical reflection about virtue and character must be tied to defensible notions of personality and selfhood, into dialogue with academic psychologists, who believe that the developmental study of the moral self requires adequate grounding in various psychological literatures. The first group embraces a "naturalized" ethics, while the second group favors a "psychologized" morality. Among the topics explored in this volume are the constructs of moral selfhood, personality, and identity, as well as defensible models of character education. One of the primary arguments of the volume is that problems of character education cannot be addressed until an adequate model of character psychology is developed. In addition to the excellent theoretical essays, this collection includes applied chapters that consider the challenge of character education in the context of schools, families, and organized sports. This book will be an invaluable resource both for scholars and practitioners in the fields of psychology and education. Contributors: Daniel K. Lapsley, F. Clark Power, Darcia Narvaez, Christine McKinnon, Augusto Blasi, Ann Higgins-D'Alessandro, David Light Shields, Brenda Light Bredemeier, Craig A. Cunningham, Joel J. Kupperman, Matthew L. Davidson, Robert J. Nash, Marvin W. Berkowitz, Melinda Bier, Jeannie Oakes, Karen Hunter Quartz, Steve Ryan, Martin Lipton, and Jay W. Brandenberger.

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This timely book brings together distinguished scholars who reflect on the fascination and fear that humans inevitably experience when confronted with diverse religious beliefs and practices. Contributors argue that fear of the “stranger” and his or her religion can only be overcome through education, and they suggest ways in which we can better understand one another and the world in which we live. The first part of the collection, entitled “Talking with Strangers,” explores avenues for finding common ground between “religious strangers.” In this set of essays Stephen Prothero examines the American reception of Hinduism, John de Gruchy analyzes the relationship between Christianity, Judaism, and Islam in South Africa, and Bhikhu Parekh imagines a dialogue between Osama bin Laden and Mahatma Gandhi. The second set of essays addresses the theme of understanding difference, with a particular focus on methodological approaches within philosophy of religion. Wendy Doniger argues for an approach to cross-cultural studies that recognizes both the similarities and the differences between us and the other, and that encourages us to think and feel with the alien tradition. Eliot Deutsch advocates a pluralistic approach to religion that encourages cross-religious dialogue. Robert Neville’s essay challenges the tendency to view other religions through a lens shaped by one’s own faith tradition. The final set of essays discusses religious conversions and converts. It includes a piece by John Carman on conversion from Hinduism to Christianity, an essay by Werner Gundersheimer on crossing the border between Christianity and Judaism, and Pravrajika Vrajaprana’s description of her experience as a Caucasian American who became a Hindu nun. Collectively these essays reveal the importance of learning about, listening to, and empathizing with the “stranger’s religion.” This book will appeal to anyone who is interested in cross-religious and cultural dialogue.

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Higher education and university-based research rank among the main forces shaping our world. Focusing on knowledge rather than institutions, Language, Religion, Knowledge offers penetrating insight into how higher learning took its present form and the direction in which it is headed. The first section of this remarkable collection probes the history of higher learning in the United States; the second analyzes problems in higher learning today. Renowned historian James Turner uncovers surprising blind spots in our knowledge of how higher learning has evolved by focusing on four themes: the influence of philology, historicism, disciplinary specialization, and the retreat of religion from the academy. Turner offers an especially interesting discussion of the powerful, yet often unrecognized, impact of the study of texts and languages on knowledge. These thought-provoking essays examine losses and gains for contemporary higher education resulting from the fading of religion. Turner counts fragmentation of knowledge and the “marooning of research on an island of secular modernity” as among the greatest losses. Yet, he also proposes ways for higher learning today to recover the benefits of religiously grounded thinking without compromising the advantages of secularity. By demonstrating that religious intellectual traditions can and should reinvigorate the life of the mind, Language, Religion, Knowledge gives new insights into the past and future of higher education.

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In this extended essay, Vittorio Hösle develops a theory of the comical and applies it to interpret both the recurrent personae played by Woody Allen the actor and the philosophical issues addressed by Woody Allen the director in his films. Taking Henri Bergson’s analysis of laughter as a starting point, Hösle integrates aspects of other theories of laughter to construct his own more finely-articulated and expanded model. With this theory in hand, Hösle discusses the incongruity in the characters played by Woody Allen and describes how these personae are realized in his work. Hösle focuses on the philosophical issues in Allen’s major films by exploring the identity problem in Play It Again, Sam and Zelig, the shortcomings of the positivist concept of reality in A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy, the relation between reality and art in The Purple Rose of Cairo, the objective validity of morality in Crimes and Misdemeanors, the power of evil in Shadows and Fog, and the relation between art and morality in Bullets over Broadway. He cites Allen’s virtuosic reinterpretation of older forms of expression and his integration of the fantastic into the comic universe—elements like the giant breasts, anxious sperm, extraterrestrials, ghosts, and magicians that populate his movies—as formal moves akin to those of Aristophanes. Both an overview of Allen’s work and a philosophical analysis of laughter, Hösle’s study demonstrates why Allen’s films have more to offer us—morally, philosophically, and artistically—than just a few laughs.

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Variations in students' performance across different school sectors—specifically, public, private religious, and private nonreligious schools—has long been an important topic in the sociology of education. In recent years, debate over the merits of each sector has increased between advocates and critics of school choice, as exemplified by current struggles over educational vouchers and their ramifications for public policy and politics. What has been lacking in this debate, however, has been a theoretically grounded empirical analysis of the factors that affect student success across sectors. School Sector and Student Outcomes offers such an assessment. By presenting a set of methodologically rigorous empirical studies, the volume provides a viable basis for comparisons across sectors on such issues as school organization, governance, curriculum, and pedagogy in U.S. elementary and secondary schools. Carefully reasoned conceptual analyses identify the source of sector differences, trace the evolution of the dual school system in the U.S., and describe the mechanisms that link school sector to school processes. The volume amply documents how sector differences operate and what the consequences are for student learning and behavior. Of intrinsic interest to administrators and scholars in education and the sociology of education, this volume should stimulate new research and help educators improve both public and private schools.

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In God as Reason: Essays in Philosophical Theology, Vittorio Hösle presents a systematic exploration of the relation between theology and philosophy. In examining the problems and historical precursors of rational theology, he calls on philosophy, theology, history of science, and the history of ideas to find an interpretation of Christianity that is compatible with a genuine commitment to reason. The essays in the first part of God as Reason deal with issues of philosophical theology. Hösle sketches the challenges that a rationalist theology must face and discusses some of the central ones, such as the possibility of a teleological interpretation of nature after Darwin, the theodicy issue, freedom versus determinism, the mindbody problem, and the relation in general between religion, theology, and philosophy. In the essays of the second part, Hösle studies the historical development of philosophical approaches to the Bible, the continuity between the New Testament concept of pneuma and the concept of Geist (spirit) in German idealism, and the rationalist theologies of Anselm, Abelard, Llull, and Nicholas of Cusa, whose innovative philosophy of mathematics is the topic of one of the chapters. The book concludes with a thorough evaluation of Charles Taylor’s theory of secularization. This ambitious work will interest students and scholars of philosophical theology and philosophy of religion as well as historians of ideas and science.

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Historians and cultural critics face special challenges when treating the nonhuman natural world in the medieval and early modern periods. Their most daunting problem is that in both the visual and written records of the time, nature seems to be both everywhere and nowhere. In the broadest sense, nature was everywhere, for it was vital to human survival. Agriculture, animal husbandry, medicine, and the patterns of human settlement all have their basis in natural settings. Humans also marked personal, community, and seasonal events by natural occurrences and built their cultural explanations around the workings of nature, which formed the unspoken backdrop for every historical event and document of the time. Yet in spite of the ubiquity of nature’s continual presence in the physical surroundings and the artistic and literary cultures of these periods, overt discussion of nature is often hard to find. Until the sixteenth century, responses to nature were quite often recorded only in the course of investigating other subjects. In a very real sense, nature went without saying. As a result, modern scholars analyzing the concept of nature in the history of medieval and early modern Europe must often work in deeply interdisciplinary ways. This challenge is deftly handled by the contributors to Engaging with Nature, whose essays provide insights into such topics as concepts of animal/human relationships; environmental and ecological history; medieval hunting; early modern collections of natural objects; the relationship of religion and nature; the rise of science; and the artistic representations of exotic plants and animals produced by Europeans encountering the New World.

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A visible presence for some two decades, electronic literature has already produced many works that deserve the rigorous scrutiny critics have long practiced with print literature. Only now, however, with Electronic Literature by N. Katherine Hayles, do we have the first systematic survey of the field and an analysis of its importance, breadth, and wide-ranging implications for literary study. Hayles's book is designed to help electronic literature move into the classroom. Her systematic survey of the field addresses its major genres, the challenges it poses to traditional literary theory, and the complex and compelling issues at stake. She develops a theoretical framework for understanding how electronic literature both draws on the print tradition and requires new reading and interpretive strategies. Grounding her approach in the evolutionary dynamic between humans and technology, Hayles argues that neither the body nor the machine should be given absolute theoretical priority. Rather, she focuses on the interconnections between embodied writers and users and the intelligent machines that perform electronic texts. Through close readings of important works, Hayles demonstrates that a new mode of narration is emerging that differs significantly from previous models. Key to her argument is the observation that almost all contemporary literature has its genesis as electronic files, so that print becomes a specific mode for electronic text rather than an entirely different medium. Hayles illustrates the implications of this condition with three contemporary novels that bear the mark of the digital. Included with the book is a companion website (https://newhorizons.eliterature.org/index.php) and an online resource, The Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 1 (https://collection.eliterature.org/1/). The companion website offers resources for teachers and students, including sample syllabi, original essays, author biographies, and useful links. The ELC contains sixty new and recent works of electronic literature with keyword index, authors' notes, and editorial headnotes. Representing multiple modalities of electronic writing—hypertext fiction, kinetic poetry, generative and combinatory forms, network writing, codework, 3D, narrative animations, installation pieces, and Flash poetry—the collection encompasses comparatively low-tech work alongside heavily coded pieces. Together, the book, companion website, and collection provide an exceptional pedagogical opportunity.

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f2f: Shorthand for "face-to-face," as in meeting someone in real life, flesh-to-flesh, as opposed to in the electronic world of cyberspace. Used in chat rooms and while instant messaging on the Internet. At the core of this challenging new collection from Janet Holmes is the conceit of the sense of sight and the complex role it plays in women's self-identities and relationships. Emily Dickinson is introduced as the iconic female writer who, unread in her time, is frequently misinterpreted and unheard. Holmes relates Dickinson's self-isolation to the writer's isolation from the reader and the intimacy of the act of reading. Echo, Eurydice, and Eros—other "E" figures, these mythological, their stories relying on seeing and being seen—are related by Holmes to twentieth-century counterparts manifesting as an anorexic, a flamboyant dresser, and a love god, respectively. Holmes intersperses her meditation with the language of online text-messaging, employing it as a vehicle for probing the dual limitations and liberties afforded on-line correspondents. Through her correspondents' postings, we chart their relationship evolving without benefit of ever meeting or exchanging photographs, the participants deeply affected by the absence of the sense of sight. By turns provocative and timid, lyrical and terse, the voices in f2f exhibit myriad human reactions to how seeing each other influences how we behave.

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The poetry in Humanophone, the third volume from award-winning poet Janet Holmes, celebrates composers and creators such as Harry Partch, Raymond Scott, Leon Theremin, and George Ives, who had to invent new instruments to capture the music heard in their “mind’s ear.” Taking its title from a George Ives invention—an instrument made from a group of humans, each of whom sings a single note, arrayed like a xylophone—Humanophone appears on its surface to be about music. But its real subject is the artist’s creative dilemma—how to deliver a new idea, whether it be a song or a poem, through existing media. Holmes works language into a variety of forms both familiar—syllabics, couplets, villanelles, sonnets—and engagingly new. With everything from kumquats to abandoned wedding pictures, Clara Bow to Bill Robinson, Keats’s belle dame to Dante’s Francesca, feng shui to a recipe for octopus, Humanophone celebrates how the body shapes art from the world it is given. In Humanophone, Holmes not only chronicles events such as Harry Partch’s transformation of glass chemical containers from the Berkeley Radiation Lab into the melodious and beautiful Cloud-Chamber Bowls, but also traces a playful path through the familiar, as a trombone’s upwards glissando becomes “a backwards pratfall/in brass.” Engaging a broad array of subjects, Holmes’s poetry is as delightful as it is thoughtful, as simple as it is complex.

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Setting Aside All Authority is an important account and analysis of seventeenth-century scientific arguments against the Copernican system. Christopher M. Graney challenges the long-standing ideas that opponents of the heliocentric ideas of Copernicus and Galileo were primarily motivated by religion or devotion to an outdated intellectual tradition, and that they were in continual retreat in the face of telescopic discoveries. Graney calls on newly translated works by anti-Copernican writers of the time to demonstrate that science, not religion, played an important, and arguably predominant, role in the opposition to the Copernican system. Anti-Copernicans, building on the work of the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, were in fact able to build an increasingly strong scientific case against the heliocentric system at least through the middle of the seventeenth century, several decades after the advent of the telescope. The scientific case reached its apogee, Graney argues, in the 1651 New Almagest of the Italian Jesuit astronomer Giovanni Battista Riccioli, who used detailed telescopic observations of stars to construct a powerful scientific argument against Copernicus. Setting Aside All Authority includes the first English translation of Monsignor Francesco Ingoli’s essay to Galileo (disputing the Copernican system on the eve of the Inquisition’s condemnation of it in 1616) and excerpts from Riccioli's reports regarding his experiments with falling bodies.

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This collection of original essays examines debates on how written, printed, visual, and performed works produced meaning in American culture before 1900. The contributors argue that America has been a multimedia culture since the eighteenth century. According to Sandra M. Gustafson, the verbal arts before 1900 manifest a strikingly rich pattern of development and change. From the wide variety of indigenous traditions, through the initial productions of settler communities, to the elaborations of colonial, postcolonial, and national expressive forms, the shifting dynamics of performed, manuscript-based, and printed verbal art capture critical elements of rapidly changing societies. The contributors address performances of religion and government, race and gender, poetry, theater, and song. Their studies are based on texts—intended for reading silently or out loud—maps, recovered speech, and pictorial sources. As these essays demonstrate, media, even when they appear to be fixed, reflected a dynamic American experience. Contributors: Caroline F. Sloat, Matthew P. Brown, David S. Shields, Martin Brückner, Jeffrey H. Richards, Phillip H. Round, Hilary E. Wyss, Angela Vietto, Katherine Wilson, Joan Newlon Radner, Ingrid Satelmajer, Joycelyn Moody, Philip F. Gura, Coleman Hutchison, Oz Frankel, Susan S. Williams, Laura Burd Schiavo, and Sandra M. Gustafson

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In this volume, the first in a two-part anthology of non-fiction writings by Caribbean women, Veronica Marie Gregg has collected works written from the turn of the nineteenth century to 1980. Her selections are guided by a search for answers to the questions: What have West Indian women contributed to the creation of Anglophone Caribbean society, politics, cultures, and intellectual traditions? How is Caribbean womanhood defined and articulated? Beginning with the writings of generations of women born after slavery ended, the anthology builds on existing bodies of knowledge and forms of inquiry into Caribbean women’s lives through its presentation of some of their many important contributions to the creation and development of Caribbean intellectual history. This volume is divided into two sections that are broadly shaped by major historical flashpoints: the postemancipation and decolonization struggles (1890–1945), and the postwar period marked by a movement toward nation building, constitutional independence, and cultural nationalism (1945–1980). The volume begins with some of the (so far) earliest known writing by native born West Indian women on political and social issues and ends at the point where sustained Caribbean feminist scholarship begins. Writings in the first section are drawn primarily from newspapers, pamphlets, and occasional publications. They address key issues such as voting rights, political equality, colonialism, race, work, and social welfare. The second section includes the work of some of the women who were part of the first and second generations of professional academic women at the University of the West Indies, established in 1948. Their selections challenge many of the prevailing intellectual models used to define Caribbean societies and identities. This distinctive collection is an excellent resource for students and professors in the fields of Caribbean Studies, African American Studies, and women’s studies.

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The View from Within examines the character of reason and the ability of an individual to effectively distance himself from the normative framework in which he functions in order to be self-critical and innovative. To accomplish this task, Menachem Fisch and Yitzhak Benbaji critically employ or reject the recent writings of Brandom, Friedman, Frankfurt, Walzer, Davidson, Williams, Habermas, Rorty, and McDowell to offer a fundamental analysis of the character of reason and the problem of relativism. This ambitious book forcefully raises the problem of rational normative change and makes the unique and insightful claim that although we cannot be convinced by normative criticism to modify or replace our norms, we can be rationally motivated to do so by the effect of exposure to trusted critics. Its unprecedented analysis, with its solution to the problem of normative self-criticism that has baffled philosophers for the past sixty years, will be welcomed by both students and scholars of philosophy.

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Apophasis has become a major topic in the humanities, particularly in philosophy, religion, and literature. This monumental two-volume anthology gathers together most of the important historical works on apophaticism and illustrates the diverse trajectories of apophatic discourse in ancient, modern, and postmodern times. William Franke provides a major introductory essay on apophaticism at the beginning of each volume, and shorter introductions to each anthology selection. The second volume, Modern and Contemporary Transformations, contains texts by Hölderlin, Schelling, Kierkegaard, Dickinson, Rilke, Kafka, Rosenzweig, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Weil, Schoenberg, Adorno, Beckett, Celan, Levinas, Derrida, Marion, and more.

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In this historically-informed work in moral psychology, Rick Anthony Furtak develops a conceptual account of the emotions that addresses the conventional idea that reason and emotion stand in sharp opposition. Furtak begins with a critical examination of the ancient Stoic position that emotions ought to be avoided by rational human beings. He argues that, on the contrary, emotions ought to be understood as embodying a kind of authentic insight, which enables us to attain a meaningful and truthful way of seeing the world. Furtak's positive alternative to Stoicism draws heavily on the writings of Søren Kierkegaard, particularly "Either/Or" and "Works of Love," while also engaging with a wide range of other relevant philosophical, literary, and religious sources. He argues that a morality of virtue and narrative awareness is necessary for accurate emotional perception, and then attempts to define a qualified value realism based upon a reverential trust in love as the ground of life as we know it. The outcome of this inquiry into the possibility of reliable emotion is an account of the ideal state in which a person could trust himself or herself to be rational in being passionate. Wisdom in Love makes an original contribution to the philosophy of the emotions and provides a new and compelling interpretation of Kierkegaard’s work as a whole.

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In his examination of the bishopric of Orvieto from 1100 to 1250, David Foote reveals how three defining developments of the High Middle Ages—the feudal revolution, ecclesiastical reform, and state building—played out in a typical medieval Italian commune. He challenges scholarship that overemphasizes the secular nature of Italian city-states by showing the extent to which developments in ecclesiastical institutions provided a model for the formation of civic institutions and defined a commune’s political and religious culture. Following the collapse of Carolingian authority in the tenth century, Italy experienced a period of political chaos. Rural lords, unrestrained by central authority, fought to dominate the countryside. Bishoprics, by virtue of their temporal and spiritual authority over dioceses, emerged in the midst of this disorder as the most effective institutions for rebuilding political authority at the local level. The Orvietan bishopric formed the center of an urban coalition attempting to conquer and pacify their contado, or surrounding countryside. Orvieto’s bishopric assisted the early city-state in administering its territory by developing innovative methods of written administration and record keeping. As the center of a wide range of religious interests, the bishopric was often caught between competing political and religious actors who leveraged their interests through ecclesiastical institutions and resources. This interaction had a profound effect on the city’s political and religious culture. As Orvietans struggled to define the norms that would govern their society, they had to adapt their quest for political power and autonomy to their religious values. David Foote’s deeply researched new book illuminates the process of state building in its early stages and the formation of political and religious culture in Europe during the High Middle Ages.

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Visions of Community in the Pre-Modern World contains original essays by five leading scholars in the fields of history, art history, and literature on the ways in which communities were imagined and built between the eleventh and sixteenth centuries. These essays, which function as case studies, range geographically from Europe to Africa, the Near East to regions of Latin America. While acknowledging major factors that affect community—such as religious belief, imperial expansion, and warfare—these studies focus on precise examples and moments in the pre-modern world. Giles Constable discusses the ways in which monastic vows of service to God served as the basis for communities of monks in Europe in the Middle Ages. Anthony Cutler explores the means by which Byzantine and Islamic communities were created and maintained through the use of visual and textual signs. Annabel Patterson draws on visual images and representations to explore how endangered Catholic communities struggled to survive in Reformation England. Richard Kagan offers a survey of city images and plans in the Hispanic world of Europe and the Americas. Pamela Sheingorn focuses on the attempts of fifteenth-century French theologian Jean Gerson to reinvent forms of religious community at a time of crisis. An introduction by Nicholas Howe places this work in its scholarly context. The five contributors to this volume reveal the inherent complexity and variety of communities within pre-modern Europe. They offer a powerful argument against sweeping generalizations about the ways in which humans form themselves into groups, and encourage further scholarly research into the ways in which communities are formed and shaped.

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Private Histories is a complete literary history of the American Irish during the first part of the twentieth century. Ron Ebest offers a fresh perspective on familiar novelists, dramatists, and poets, introduces readers to a number of important writers who are often overlooked, and reveals rarely considered aspects of Irish-American social history. Ebest analyzes themes of particular importance to early twentieth-century Irish Americans—such as religion, marriage, family, eceonomic hardship, social status, and education—in the writings of well-known authors such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Eugene O’Neill. He also explores these issues in the works of lesser known authors such as the Vanity Fair satirist Anne O’Hagan, labor activist and novelist Jim Tully, muckraking journalist Clara Laughlin, and the mystery writer John T. McIntyre. Ebest’s highly readable style makes Private Histories an excellent book for undergraduate and graduate courses on Irish-American literature and history, as well as for general readers interested in this fascinating subject.

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Gregory the Great (bishop of Rome from 590 to 604) is one of the most significant figures in the history of Christianity. His theological works framed medieval Christian attitudes toward mysticism, exegesis, and the role of the saints in the life of the church. The scale of Gregory's administrative activity in both the ecclesial and civic affairs of Rome also helped to make possible the formation of the medieval papacy. Gregory disciplined malcontent clerics, negotiated with barbarian rulers, and oversaw the administration of massive estates that employed thousands of workers. Scholars have often been perplexed by the two sides of Gregory—the monkish theologian and the calculating administrator. George E. Demacopoulos's study is the first to advance the argument that there is a clear connection between the pontiff's thought and his actions. By exploring unique aspects of Gregory's ascetic theology, wherein the summit of Christian perfection is viewed in terms of service to others, Demacopoulos argues that the very aspects of Gregory's theology that made him distinctive were precisely the factors that structured his responses to the practical crises of his day. With a comprehensive understanding of Christian history that resists the customary bifurcation between Christian East and Christian West, Demacopoulos situates Gregory within the broader movements of Christianity and the Roman world that characterize the shift from late antiquity to the early Middle Ages. This fresh reading of Gregory's extensive theological and practical works underscores the novelty and nuance of Gregory as thinker and bishop.

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This eagerly awaited study brings to completion Louis Dupré's planned trilogy on European culture during the modern epoch. Demonstrating remarkable erudition and sweeping breadth, The Quest of the Absolute analyzes Romanticism as a unique cultural phenomenon and a spiritual revolution. Dupré philosophically reflects on its attempts to recapture the past and transform the present in a movement that is partly a return to premodern culture and partly a violent protest against it. Following an introduction on the historical origins of the Romantic Movement, Dupré examines the principal Romantic poets of England (Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats), Germany (Goethe, Schiller, Novalis, Hölderlin), and France (Lamartine, de Vigny, Hugo), all of whom, from different perspectives, pursued an absolute ideal. In the chapters of the second part, he concentrates on the critical principles of Romantic aesthetics, the Romantic image of the person as reflected in the novel, and Romantic ethical and political theories. In the chapters of the third, more speculative, part, he investigates the comprehensive syntheses of romantic thought in history, philosophy, and theology. The Quest of the Absolute is an important work both as the culmination of Dupré's ongoing project and as a classic in its own right. The book will meet the expectations of the specialist as well as appeal to more general readers with philosophical, cultural, and religious interests.

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Joseph A. Dane’s What Is a Book? is an introduction to the study of books produced during the period of the hand press, dating from around 1450 through 1800. Using his own bibliographic interests as a guide, Dane selects illustrative examples primarily from fifteenth-century books, books of particular interest to students of English literature, and books central to the development of Anglo-American bibliography. Part I of What Is a Book? covers the basic procedures of printing and the parts of the physical book—size, paper, type, illustration; Part II treats the history of book-copies—from cataloging conventions and provenance to electronic media and their implications for the study of books. Dane begins with the central distinction between a "book-copy"—the particular, individual, physical book—and a “book”—the abstract category that organizes these copies into editions, whereby each copy is interchangeable with any other. Among other issues, Dane addresses such basic questions as: How do students, bibliographers, and collectors discuss these things? And when is it legitimate to generalize on the basis of particular examples? Dane considers each issue in terms of a practical example or question a reader might confront: How do you identify books on the basis of typography? What is the status of paper evidence? How are the various elements on the page defined? What are the implications of the images available in an online database? And, significantly, how does a scholar’s personal experience with books challenge or conform to the standard language of book history and bibliography? Dane's accessible and lively tour of the field is a useful guide for all students of book history, from the beginner to the specialist.

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“The object of this book,” writes William C. Dowling in his preface, “is to make the key concepts of Paul Ricoeur’s Time and Narrative available to readers who might have felt bewildered by the twists and turns of its argument.” The sources of puzzlement are, he notes, many. For some, it is Ricoeur’s famously indirect style of presentation, in which the polarities of argument and exegesis seem so often and so suddenly to have reversed themselves. For others, it is the extraordinary intellectual range of Ricoeur’s argument, drawing on traditions as distant from each other as Heideggerian existentialism, French structuralism, and Anglo-American analytic philosophy. Yet beneath the labyrinthian surface of Ricoeur’s Temps et récit, Dowling reveals a single extended argument that, though developed unsystematically, is meant to be understood in systematic terms. Ricoeur on Time and Narrative presents that argument in clear and concise terms, in a way that will be enlightening both to readers new to Ricoeur and those who may have felt themselves adrift in the complexities of Temps et récit, Ricoeur’s last major philosophical work. Dowling divides his discussion into six chapters, all closely involved with specific arguments in Temps et récit: on mimesis, time, narrativity, semantics of action, poetics of history, and poetics of fiction. Additionally, Dowling provides a preface that lays out the French intellectual context of Ricoeur's philosophical method. An appendix presents his English translation of a personal interview in which Ricoeur, having completed Time and Narrative, looks back over his long career as an internationally renowned philosopher. Ricoeur on Time and Narrative communicates to readers the intellectual excitement of following Ricoeur’s dismantling of established theories and arguments—Aristotle and Augustine and Husserl on time, Frye and Greimas on narrative structure, Arthur Danto and Louis O. Mink on the nature of historical explanation—while coming to see how, under the pressure of Ricoeur’s analysis, these ideas are reconstituted and revealed in a new set of relations to one another.

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Simone Weil's philosophical and social thought during her short life (1909-1943) was intimately engaged with the nature of power and force, both human and natural, and the problems inherent in the use of force. Weil argued vehemently for pacifism, then moved toward a guarded acceptance of the use of force under very specific circumstances, in the context of the rise of Nazism. Ultimately she came to a nuanced and unique perspective on force and on the preservation of human dignity, in the aftermath of several profound mystical experiences during the last years of her life. E. Jane Doering carefully examines and analyzes the material in Weil's notebooks and lesser-known essays to illuminate her evolving thought on violence, war, and injustice. In addition, Doering addresses Weil's engagement with the Bhagavad Gita during her final years, a text that reoriented and enlightened Weil's activist and intellectual search for moral value in a violent world. Apart from small excerpts, none of the four volumes of Weil's notebooks, only recently published in French, have been translated into English. Simone Weil and the Specter of Self-Perpetuating Force contains Doering's expert translations of numerous notebook entries. The book will interest Weil scholars, those in French studies, and those who explore interdisciplinary topics in philosophy, religious studies, history, and political science.

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In Beyond Political Liberalism, Troy Dostert offers a critical examination of political liberalism, the approach to liberal political theory advanced most forcefully in the later work of John Rawls. Political liberalism's defenders claim that an “overlapping consensus” of shared values holds out the strongest prospects for regulating democratic politics in light of our moral diversity. Dostert contends, however, that the attempt to establish such a consensus in fact works to restrict and control the presence of religious and other moral perspectives that can ennoble and invigorate public life. Dostert argues that there is a steep price to be paid for this conception of politics, for what results is a political vision characterized by a profound distrust and fear of citizens' comprehensive convictions—the animating source of many citizens' political activity. He suggests that a “post-secular” ethics is a more appropriate response to moral diversity than restricting and managing the presence of religion and other moral perspectives in public life. By drawing on the religious witness of the civil rights movement and the work of theologian John Howard Yoder, Dostert elucidates several core dialogic practices and illustrates their value through a consideration of the contemporary debates surrounding international debt relief and abortion. Challenging the secular presuppositions of contemporary liberal political theory, Beyond Political Liberalism will appeal to scholars in political philosophy and contemporary theology. It will also interest religious communities and parishes dedicated to political activity.

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In late antiquity the rising number of ascetics who joined the priesthood faced a pastoral dilemma. Should they follow a traditional, demonstrably administrative, approach to pastoral care, emphasizing doctrinal instruction, the care of the poor, and the celebration of the sacraments? Or should they bring to the parish the ascetic models of spiritual direction, characterized by a more personal spiritual father/spiritual disciple relationship? Five Models of Spiritual Direction in the Early Church explores the struggles of five clerics (Athanasius, Gregory Nazianzen, Augustine of Hippo, John Cassian, and Pope Gregory I) to reconcile their ascetic idealism with the reality of pastoral responsibility. Through a close reading of Greek and Latin texts, George E. Demacopoulos explores each pastor's criteria for ordination, his supervision of subordinate clergy, and his methods of spiritual direction. He argues that the evolution in spiritual direction that occurred during this period reflected and informed broader developments in religious practices. Demacopoulos describes the way in which these authors shaped the medieval pastoral traditions of the East and the West. Each of the five struggled to balance the tension between his ascetic idealism and the realities of the lay church. Each offered distinct (and at times very different) solutions to that tension. The diversity among their models of spiritual direction demonstrates both the complexity of the problem and the variable nature of early Christianity. Scholars and students of late antiquity, the history of Christianity, and historical theology will find a great deal of interest in Five Models of Spiritual Direction in the Early Church. The book will also appeal to those who are actively engaged in Christian ministry.

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Focusing on particular characters, situations, or emotions—usually with little or no explicit plot—lyric song poses interpretive challenges to the listening audience. Without an overt plot, how does one understand what a song is about? Are there rules or norms for how to interpret them? Do these rules remain the same from culture to culture, or do they vary? By looking at the ways in which cultures in Northern Europe interpret lyric songs, Thomas A. DuBois illuminates both commonalities of interpretive practice and unique features of their musical traditions. DuBois draws on sets of lyric songs from England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, and Finland to explore the question of meaning in folklore, especially the role of traditional audiences in appraising and understanding nonnarrative songs. DuBois's examples range from the medieval and early modern periods to the late twentieth century. His nuanced study explicates folk practices of interpretation—a "native hermeneutics" existing alongside folk songs in North European oral tradition. He examines lyric songs—particularly formal laments—embedded with prose or poetic narratives; the ritual use of lyric as charms and laments in premodern Europe; the development of personalized meanings within hymns and devotional prayers of the high Middle Ages; Shakespeare's lyric songs and their demands on the audience; and the ways in which professional lyric singers encourage certain interpretations of their songs. The only study to examine a range of northern European lyric traditions as a unified group, Lyric, Meaning, and Audience in the Oral Tradition of Northern Europe will be of interest to scholars in medieval studies, literary studies, and folklore.

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This is the first book to focus on the effects of violence in internal conflicts after peace agreements have been signed. Since the mid-1990s many peace processes, including those in Israel-Palestine, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Northern Ireland, have reverted to violence while seeking to implement formal peace agreements. In all these cases the persistence and forms of violence have been among the main determinants of the success or failure of the peace process. Violence and Reconstruction adopts a four-part analysis, examining in turn violence emanating from the state, from militants, from destabilized societies, and from the challenge of implementing a range of policies including demobilization, disarmament, and policing. Leading scholars explore in detail each of these aspects of postwar violence. Their findings draw attention to the increased willingness of the state to turn to militias to carry on violence by proxy; to the importance of distinguishing between the aims and actions of different militant groups; to a postwar rise in violent conventional crime; and to the importance of the proper restoration of civil society.

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John Dunne calls his latest book A Vision Quest, borrowing the term from Native American tradition where a youth, coming of age, keeps a solitary vigil, seeking spiritual power and knowledge through a vision. Dunne seeks a vision like that of the great circle of love an old Bedouin described to Lawrence of Arabia,"The love is from God and of God and towards God." The modern vision of the world is one of evolution, life arising from matter, intelligence arising from life. The ancient vision was one of emanation, everything cascading down from the One. Dunne imagines bringing the two together into a great circle, everything coming from God and returning to God, where everything is "from God and of God and towards God." This inspirational work features a series of meditations by Dunne, enriched by his wide-ranging insights and quotations from the areas of theology, philosophy, and literature.

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After the Berlin Wall fell, scholars flocked to eastern Europe to conduct extensive opinion research on citizens' political attitudes and values. In eastern Germany, post-communist political elites were found to differ from western German politicians, exhibiting greater distrust of both political parties and party discipline, more political intolerance, a preference for economic equality over political freedom, and support for direct rather than representative democracy. These attitudes were expected to be hurdles to democratization. Yet only limited research has been done to determine whether eastern German politicians' attitudes and values actually influenced their actions. Becoming Party Politicians fills this empirical void by comparing eastern and western German state legislators in the decade following unification. While the two groups hold contrasting attitudes, they serve in virtually identical political institutions. The book finds little evidence to suggest that the political attitudes and values of eastern parliamentarians have hindered their adaptation to united Germany's political system. Instead, Germany's parliamentary and electoral institutions—together known as the party state—have created disciplined eastern parliamentarians. Placed in these identical parliamentary institutions, both eastern and western German legislators have responded similarly. Legislative voting on issues surrounding political tolerance, direct democracy, and economic equality can now be predicted on the basis of parliamentarians' partisan affiliation rather than their eastern or western origin. Davidson-Schmich's conclusions, based on personal interviews with state legislators and analysis of parliamentary debates between 1990 and 2002, not only shed light on German politics and the sources of legislator behavior; they also contribute to broader debates involving both the ability of western European political institutions to survive societal change and the influence of political institutions on the consolidation of democracy in post-communist settings.

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Roberto DaMatta, one of the foremost Brazilian anthropologists, and his colleague Elena Soárez approach the question of gambling in popular culture in general and its treatment in social anthropology in particular. They focus on the "animal game," a kind of popular gambling entertainment or lottery within Brazil in which locals bet on a list of twenty-five animals. They argue that the success of this game, which originated in 1882 with the founding of the first zoo in Rio de Janeiro, and the social release the game provides are significant aspects of Brazilian social history and of the Brazilian "identity." Within the animal game, players "totemize" and identify with various animals. DaMatta and Soárez use this identification as a lens through which to view Brazil’s modernity, society, the significance of gambling, and even the role of animal images in Brazilian and Western society. Appearing for the first time in English, this well-written work moves smoothly between comprehensive analysis and field observations of specific behaviors and practices, such as the lucky tricks and devices invested with magical thinking by those who play the game. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in sociology, anthropology, Brazilian studies, and Latin American cultural studies.

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The nine essays in this collection represent the first book-length treatment of one of the major changes that have shaped Latin America since independence: decentralization of the state. Contributors argue that though the assignment of political, fiscal, and administrative duties to subnational governments has been one of the most important political developments in Latin America, it is also one of the most overlooked. This volume is divided into three sections. Part one presents an overview of the topic by the editors; part two considers the political origins of decentralization; and part three examines decentralization and economic reforms. Decentralization and Democracy in Latin America explores the causes of decentralization in six significant case studies: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and Venezuela. Shorter analyses of Uruguay and Peru are also included. The essays in this volume find substantial common ground across regime types, historical periods, and countries, and yield several substantive conclusions. First, historical-institutional and socioeconomic legacies matter. Second, democratization and neoliberal reform are neither necessary nor sufficient to explain decentralization. Finally, institutional and electoralist approaches, supplemented with analysis of macro and distal factors, offer the most promising avenues for further research. This book will be important for all students and scholars of Latin America and comparative politics.

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This is the first book to focus on the effects of violence in internal conflicts after peace agreements have been signed. Since the mid-1990s many peace processes, including those in Israel-Palestine, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Northern Ireland, have reverted to violence while seeking to implement formal peace agreements. In all these cases the persistence and forms of violence have been among the main determinants of the success or failure of the peace process. Violence and Reconstruction adopts a four-part analysis, examining in turn violence emanating from the state, from militants, from destabilized societies, and from the challenge of implementing a range of policies including demobilization, disarmament, and policing. Leading scholars explore in detail each of these aspects of postwar violence. Their findings draw attention to the increased willingness of the state to turn to militias to carry on violence by proxy; to the importance of distinguishing between the aims and actions of different militant groups; to a postwar rise in violent conventional crime; and to the importance of the proper restoration of civil society.

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Dante and the Grammar of the Nursing Body takes a serious look at Dante's relation to Latin grammar and the new "mother tongue"-Italian vernacular-by exploring the cultural significance of the nursing mother in medieval discussions of language and selfhood. Inspired by Julia Kristeva's meditations on the maternal semiotic, Cestaro's book uncovers ancient and medieval discourses that assert the nursing body's essential role in the development of a mature linguistic self. The opening chapters locate traces of the nursing motif in Dante's minor works and particularly in his Latin treatise on the mother tongue, De vulgari eloquentia. Cestaro argues that a primal scene of suckling motivates the poet's musings on language and brings the work to its premature end. Subsequent chapters explore the evolution of the nursing body in the Comedy: from the parodic anti-nurse of Inferno (archetypically Circe with her poison milk), to the Christian deconstruction and reconstruction of selfhood in intimate association with female nursing on the mountain of Purgatorio. The book ends in Paradiso with a dramatic metaphorical celebration of the nursing body as a site of eternal truth and emblem of the resurrected body promised by medieval Christianity.

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Dante and the Grammar of the Nursing Body takes a serious look at Dante's relation to Latin grammar and the new "mother tongue"-Italian vernacular-by exploring the cultural significance of the nursing mother in medieval discussions of language and selfhood. Inspired by Julia Kristeva's meditations on the maternal semiotic, Cestaro's book uncovers ancient and medieval discourses that assert the nursing body's essential role in the development of a mature linguistic self. The opening chapters locate traces of the nursing motif in Dante's minor works and particularly in his Latin treatise on the mother tongue, De vulgari eloquentia. Cestaro argues that a primal scene of suckling motivates the poet's musings on language and brings the work to its premature end. Subsequent chapters explore the evolution of the nursing body in the Comedy: from the parodic anti-nurse of Inferno (archetypically Circe with her poison milk), to the Christian deconstruction and reconstruction of selfhood in intimate association with female nursing on the mountain of Purgatorio. The book ends in Paradiso with a dramatic metaphorical celebration of the nursing body as a site of eternal truth and emblem of the resurrected body promised by medieval Christianity.

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Originally published in 1988, Jon Roberts’s book provided the first comprehensive analytical overview of public dialogue among nineteenth-century American Protestant intellectuals who struggled with the theory of organic evolution. Before the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1859, most American Protestant intellectuals valued science, especially natural history, for supplying data that appeared to be invaluable for defending many major tenets of the Christian worldview. Arguments over the scientific merits of Darwin’s theory gave way to discussions of its theological implications. Roberts’s book reconstructs the course of that conversation from 1875 to 1900.

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This book presents key documents from the pre-1915 history of the extraterrestrial life debate. Introductions and commentaries accompany each source document, some of which are published here for the first time or in a new translation. Authors included are Aristotle, Lucretius, Aquinas, Nicholas of Cusa, Galileo, Kepler, Pascal, Fontenelle, Huygens, Newton, Pope, Voltaire, Kant, Paine, Chalmers, Darwin, Wallace, Dostoevski, Lowell, and Antoniadi, among others. Michael J. Crowe has compiled an extensive bibliography not available in other sources. These materials reveal that the extraterrestrial life debate, rather than being a relatively modern phenomenon, has extended throughout nearly all Western history and has involved many of its leading intellectuals. The readings also demonstrate that belief in extraterrestrial life has had major effects on science and society, and that metaphysical and religious views have permeated the debate throughout much of its history.

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In this welcome new book Marcia L. Colish offers the only monograph-length study of the patriarch treatises of Ambrose of Milan (c. 340-397), in which he develops, for the first time in the patristic period, an ethics for the laity. Ambrose the ethicist has been viewed primarily as the author of advice to those with special callings in the church, such as priests, widows, and consecrated virgins. His views have been characterized as advocating asceticism and promoting a Platonic view of human nature, in which the body is a moral problem. Ambrose's patriarch treatises, argues Colish, are instead aimed at lay people who did not have special callings in the church, but who led active lives in the world as spouses, parents, heads of households, professionals, and citizens. These treatises reveal a different side of Ambrose and show that he developed an ethics of moderation based on an Aristotelian and Stoic anthropology, which he modified in the light of biblical ethics and St. Paul's view of human nature. Colish’s analysis sharply revises previous estimates of Ambrose the ethicist through a careful consideration of the patriarch treatises in their historical context, as Lenten sermons delivered by Ambrose to the catechumens in his Milanese church whom he was preparing during Lent for their coming Easter baptism. The pastoral context and intended audience of these treatises have largely been ignored in previous scholarship. Colish contends that when the treatises are read as Ambrose intended for them to be received, as a corpus of works aimed at the conversion of pagan Roman adults to Christianity, Ambrose’s vision of a Christian ethics for the common man emerges.

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While religious history and intellectual history are both active, dynamic fields of contemporary historical inquiry, historians of ideas and historians of religion have too often paid little attention to one another's work. The intellectual historian Quentin Skinner urged scholars to attend to the contexts as well as the texts of authors, in order to 'see things their way.' Where religion is concerned, however, historians have often failed to heed this good advice; this book helps to remedy that failure. The editors and contributors urge intellectual historians to explore the religious dimensions of ideas and at the same time commend the methods of intellectual history to historians of religion. The introduction is followed by an essay by Brad Gregory reflecting on issues related to the study of the history of religious ideas. Subsequent essays by John Coffey, Anna Sapir Abulafia, Howard Hotson, Richard A. Muller, and Willem J. van Asselt explore the importance of religion in the intellectual history of Great Britain and Europe in the medieval and early modern periods. James Bradley shifts forward with his essay on religious ideas in Enlightenment England. Mark Noll and Alister Chapman deal respectively with British influence on the writing of religious history in America and with the relationship between intellectual history and religion in modern Britain. David Bebbington provides a concluding reflection on the challenges inherent in restoring the centrality of religion to intellectual history.

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Do Christianity and modern liberal democracy share a common moral vision, or are they opposed and even hostile to each other? In Christian Faith and Modern Democracy, Robert Kraynak challenges the commonly accepted view that Christianity is inherently compatible with modern democratic society. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Kraynak argues that there is no necessary connection between Christianity and any form of government and that, in many important respects, Christianity is weakened by its close alliance with contemporary versions of democracy and human rights. Christian Faith and Modern Democracy was written, in part, to convince secular intellectuals that modern democracy needs God. But it was also written in response to the new consensus about politics that has emerged among Christian believers. Almost all churches and theologians now think that the form of government most compatible with Christianity is democracy and that the historic opposition of the Christian tradition to democracy and to various forms of liberalism was a mistake. What caused Christians to change their view of political authority and to embrace liberal democracy? Were they wise to change their view? This provocative book attempts to answer these questions by reexamining the relationship between democracy and Christianity through the lens of St. Augustine’s distinction between the city of God and the earthly city, applied to the conditions of the modern age. Kraynak argues that St. Augustine’s teaching provides the basis for a Christian theory of constitutional government and permits a variety of legitimate forms of government, including constitutional democracy. Yet, unlike contemporary Christian doctrines, it does so without embracing the subversive premises of liberalism that have threatened to turn the Christian faith into little more than a mirror image of the modern world. Sure to spark controversy among secular intellectuals and Christian believers alike, this insightful volume is an outstanding work of political philosophy with a firm foundation in theology.

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Thomas More is a complex and controversial figure who has been regarded as both saint and persecutor, leading humanist and a representative of late medieval culture. His religious writings, with their stark and at times violent attacks on what More regarded as heresy, have been hotly debated. In Writing Faith and Telling Tales, Thomas Betteridge sets More's writings in a broad cultural and chronological context, compares them to important works of late fourteenth- and fifteenth-century vernacular theology, and makes a compelling argument for the revision of existing histories of Thomas More and his legacy. Betteridge focuses on four areas of More's writings: politics, philosophy, theology, and devotion. He examines More's History of King Richard III as a work of both history and political theory. He discusses Utopia and the ways in which its treatment of reason reflects More's Christian humanism. By exploring three of More's lesser known works, The Supplication of Souls, The Confutation, and The Apology, Betteridge demonstrates that More positioned his understanding of heresy within and against a long tradition of English anti-heretical writing, as represented in the works of Hoccleve, Lydgate, and Love. Finally, Betteridge focuses on two key concepts for understanding More's late devotional works: prayer and the book of Christ. In both cases, Betteridge claims, More seeks to develop a distinctive position that combines late medieval devotionalism with an Augustinian emphasis on the ethics of writing and reading. Writing Faith and Telling Tales poses important questions concerning periodization and confessionalization and will influence future work on the English Reformation and humanist writing in England.

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In Recovering Solidarity, Gerald J. Beyer provides a contextualized theological and ethical treatment of the idea of solidarity. He focuses particularly on the Polish Solidarity movement of the 1980s and the ways in which that movement originally embodied but, during the country's transformation to a capitalist democratic society, soon abandoned this important aspect of the Catholic social tradition. Using Poland as a case study, Beyer explores the obstacles to promoting an ethic of solidarity in contemporary capitalist societies and attempts to demonstrate how the moral revolution of the early Solidarity movement can be revived, both in its country of origin and around the world. Recovering Solidarity is widely interdisciplinary, utilizing Catholic social tradition, philosophical ethics, developmental economics, poverty research, gender studies, and sociology. It will appeal to those interested in the problems of poverty and justice.

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Patricia Badir's The Maudlin Impression investigates the figure of Mary Magdalene in post-medieval English religious writings and visual representations. Badir argues that the medieval Magdalene story was not discarded as part of Reformation iconoclasm, but was enthusiastically embraced by English writers and artists and retold in a wide array of genres. This rich study bridges the historical division between medieval and early modern culture by showing the ways in which Protestant writers, as well as Catholics, used the medieval stories, art, and symbolism related to the biblical Magdalene as resources for thinking about the role of the affective and erotic in Christian devotion. Their literary and artistic glosses protected a range of religious devotional practices and lent embodied, tangible form to the God of the Reformation. They employed the Magdalene figure to articulate religious experience by means of a poetics that could avoid controversial questions of religious art while exploring the potency and appeal of the beautiful. The Maudlin Impression is a literary history of imitation and invention. It participates in the "religious turn" in early modern studies by demonstrating the resilience of a single topos across time and across changing Christian beliefs.

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