Now Through a Glass Darkly: Specular Images of Being and Knowing from Virgil to ChaucerIn this series of interrelated essays, treating Ovil, Virgil, St. Augustine, Henrich von Morungen, Chretien de Troyes, Dante, Langland, and Chaucer, the author explores the ways in which medieval authors and their Roman predecessors used the image of the mirror both as instrument and metaphor. The essays individually provide fresh insights into the texts and issues discussed and, taken together, provide new perspectives on medieval culture and the ways it anticipated problems that plague our own. Now through a Glass Darkly brings both traditional medievalist and postmodernist approaches to bear in its attempt to understand both the powers and the limits of verbal art. Nolan explores the ways medieval writers and their Roman predecessors used formal and thematic mirrors to examine the implications of alterity in the face of similarity, arguing that these preoccupations were as central to the medieval sensibility as they are to our own. Now through a Glass Darkly frames several of the key issues in the current debate over the continued viability (or not) of the inherited canon of Western culture, such as the question whether there is any meaning at all to be rescued from such notions as "coherence" or "tradition" in Western literature. Now through a Glass Darkly will appeal to the educated generalist interested in the relationships between literature and its surrounding intellectual and cultural contexts as well as to those more specifically interested in medieval poetry and poetics. For medievalists and those who work at the intersection of critical theory and medieval literature, Now through a Glass Darkly will be of critical importance. |
From inside the book
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Page 112
... light still left before the course of day had reached sunset ; vespers was there ; and where we are , midnight . ( Purgatorio 15.1-6 ) This ludic dimension of reciprocal mirroring among the stars is itself mirrored in the catoptric ...
... light still left before the course of day had reached sunset ; vespers was there ; and where we are , midnight . ( Purgatorio 15.1-6 ) This ludic dimension of reciprocal mirroring among the stars is itself mirrored in the catoptric ...
Page 163
... light and reflection , he is a Neoplaton- ist , holding to a theory that combines intromission and extramission . For him the heart is like a candle in a lantern , sending out light . Light from outside must be greater than that light ...
... light and reflection , he is a Neoplaton- ist , holding to a theory that combines intromission and extramission . For him the heart is like a candle in a lantern , sending out light . Light from outside must be greater than that light ...
Page 286
... light , reflection , and perception . One of the great ironies of history is that light , sight , perception , and reflection were thus available in a unified , coherent linguistic analogy long before they were integrated into a unified ...
... light , reflection , and perception . One of the great ironies of history is that light , sight , perception , and reflection were thus available in a unified , coherent linguistic analogy long before they were integrated into a unified ...
Contents
The Cracked Looking Glass | 1 |
Virgil Daedalus | 15 |
Ovid Orpheus | 35 |
Copyright | |
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Common terms and phrases
Aeneas Aeneid aenigmate allegorical Amor argue Augustine Augustine's Beatrice beginning Calogrenant Canterbury Canterbury Tales catoptric Cecilia chapter Chaucer Chrétien de Troyes Christ Cligés closure Commedia Confessions Daedalus Dante Dante's death desire discourse divine dream Echo Enide epic Erec Erec and Enide essay eyes fact Fenice fiction figure final Francesca function Heinrich von Morungen Hell hero Homer human Iliad imagination imago implied Inferno insists inverse Ivory Gate Lady Lancelot language Latin Laudine light literal literary Lover lyric means mediating medieval Metamorphoses Middle Ages mind mirror dictum mode move Narcissus narrative narrator nature Odyssey Orpheus Ovid Ovid's Paradiso Pardoner Paul's Piers Piers Plowman poem poet poetic present Purgatorio Pygmalion radical reader reading reflection reveals romance says sense signifying soul speak speculum Tale theory things thou tion translation truth University Press Virgil Virgilian Wallace Stevens Wife of Bath words Yvain
References to this book
The Lure of Dreams: Sigmund Freud and the Construction of Modernity Harvie Ferguson No preview available - 1996 |
Allegory and the Work of Melancholy: The Late Medieval and Shakespeare Jeremy Tambling No preview available - 2004 |