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The Beloved Disciple in Conflict?: Revisiting the Gospels of John and Thomas

Ismo Dunderberg

The relationship between the Gospel of John and the Gospel of Thomas has become a hotly debated issue, with several scholars arguing that John and Thomas are gospels in conflict. The first part of ... More

The relationship between the Gospel of John and the Gospel of Thomas has become a hotly debated issue, with several scholars arguing that John and Thomas are gospels in conflict. The first part of this book argues that the two gospels were written about the same time, but without knowledge of each other. Their authors drew upon similar Jewish and early Christian traditions independently from each other. The second part is devoted to the enigmatic ‘disciple Jesus loved’ in the Gospel of John, arguing that this disciple was created not only to authenticate this gospel, but also to replace the brothers of Jesus. Hence, this figure was developed in the context of a conflict, but that conflict was not related to Thomasine Christianity but to Jewish Christianity.Less

De Doctrina Christiana

Saint Augustine

R. P. H. Green (ed.)

This is a completely new translation of the work that Augustine wrote to guide the Christian on how to interpret Scripture and communicate it to others, a kind of do‐it‐yourself manual for ... More

This is a completely new translation of the work that Augustine wrote to guide the Christian on how to interpret Scripture and communicate it to others, a kind of do‐it‐yourself manual for discovering what the Bible teaches and passing it on. Begun at the same time as his famous Confessions, but not completed until some thirty years later, it gives fascinating insight into many sides of his thinking, not least on the value of the traditional education of which the Confessions gives such a poor impression. Augustine begins by relating his theme to the love (and enjoyment) of God and the love of one's neighbour, and then proceeds to develop a theory of signs with which he can analyse the nature of difficulties in scripture. In studying unknown signs, Augustine finds a place for some disciplines enshrined in traditional culture and the school curriculum but not all; as for ambiguous signs, he carefully explores various kinds of problems, such as that of distinguishing the figurative from the literal, and has recourse to the hermeneutic system of the Donatist Tyconius. In the fourth and last book, he discusses how to communicate scriptural teaching, drawing on a lifetime of experience but also making notable use of the writings on rhetoric of Cicero, the classical orator. The translation is equipped with an introduction that discusses the work's aims and circumstances, outlines its contents and significance, commenting briefly on the manuscripts from which the Latin text – which is also provided in this volume – is derived, and also brief explanatory notes. There is a select bibliography of useful and approachable modern criticism of this important work.Less

Pleasure and Change: The Aesthetics of Canon

Frank Kermode

Robert Alter (ed.)

The question of the canon has been the subject of debate in academic circles for over fifteen years. This book contains two lectures on this important subject by the distinguished literary critic Sir ... More

The question of the canon has been the subject of debate in academic circles for over fifteen years. This book contains two lectures on this important subject by the distinguished literary critic Sir Frank Kermode. In chapters that were originally delivered as Tanner Lectures at Berkeley in November of 2001, this book reinterprets the question of canon formation in light of two related and central notions: pleasure and change. It asks how aesthetic pleasure informs what we find valuable, and how this perception changes over time. The book also explores the role of chance, observing the connections between canon formation and unintentional and sometimes even random circumstance. Others offer incisive comments on these chapters, to which Kermode responds in a lively rejoinder.Less

Magic and Impotence in the Middle Ages

Catherine Rider

This book investigates the common medieval belief that magic could cause impotence. Because impotence was a ground for annulling a marriage in medieval canon law, it received a large amount of ... More

This book investigates the common medieval belief that magic could cause impotence. Because impotence was a ground for annulling a marriage in medieval canon law, it received a large amount of discussion in the Middle Ages, and many of these discussions also described how impotence could be caused by magic. Chapters 1-4 trace the development of ideas about magically-caused impotence from the ancient world into the 12th century, arguing that medieval writers only gradually came to distinguish impotence magic from other forms of love magic. Chapters 5-9 then analyse the main kinds of sources which mentioned impotence magic in the late Middle Ages: magical texts, confession manuals, canon law commentaries, theology commentaries, and medicine. A comparison of these sources reveals that medieval writers held surprisingly diverse opinions about what magic was, how it worked, and whether it was ever legitimate to use it. Finally, in Chapter 10, the book shows how ideas about impotence magic were affected in the 15th century by new fears of demonic witchcraft. The book argues that many authors who discussed impotence magic were interested in popular magical practices, and so it acts as a case study of the relationship between elite and popular culture in the Middle Ages. It emphasizes the importance of the 13th-century pastoral reform movement, which sought to enforce more orthodox religious practices. This movement brought churchmen into contact with popular magic, and encouraged them to write about what they saw.Less

Antithetical Arts: On the Ancient Quarrel Between Literature and Music

Peter Kivy

This book constitutes a defence of musical formalism against those who would put literary interpretations on the absolute music canon. In Part I, the historical origins of both the literary ... More

This book constitutes a defence of musical formalism against those who would put literary interpretations on the absolute music canon. In Part I, the historical origins of both the literary interpretation of absolute music and musical formalism are laid out. In Part II, specific attempts to put literary interpretations on various works of the absolute music canon are examined and criticized. Finally, in Part III, the question is raised as to what the human significance of absolute music is, if it does not lie in its representational or narrative content. The answer is that, as yet, philosophy has no answer, and that the question should be considered an important one for philosophers of art to consider, and to try to answer without appeal to representational or narrative content.Less

Susan Glaspell's Century of American Women: A Critical Interpretation of Her Work

Veronica Makowsky

As a female writer in the shadow of the cultural nimbus generated by her male peers, and as a transcendentalist in the spirit of Emerson among modernists, Susan Glaspell has suffered from literary ... More

As a female writer in the shadow of the cultural nimbus generated by her male peers, and as a transcendentalist in the spirit of Emerson among modernists, Susan Glaspell has suffered from literary obscurity from the start. An accomplished playwright, and co-founder of the Provincetown Players, Glaspell created self-reliant female heroines in works which were often dismissed as “experimental” by her colleagues. By focusing on the women of Glaspell’s writing and their struggles with the issues of motherhood and social limitation, this book seeks to vindicate Susan Glaspell and to offer her work to the attention of a new generation of readers. At the same time, the author offers a valuable and topical inquiry into the nature of the cultural and political forces that shape our perceptions of literary “greatness” and, ultimately, the canon.Less

D. H. Lawrence and ‘Difference’: Postcoloniality and the Poetry of the Present

Amit Chaudhuri and Tom Paulin

This study explores D. H. Lawrence's position as a ‘foreigner’ in the English canon. Focussing on poetry, the book examines how Lawrence's works, and Lawrence himself, have been read, and misread, in ... More

This study explores D. H. Lawrence's position as a ‘foreigner’ in the English canon. Focussing on poetry, the book examines how Lawrence's works, and Lawrence himself, have been read, and misread, in terms of their ‘difference.’ In contrast to the Leavisite project of placing Lawrence in the English ‘great tradition,’ this study demonstrates how Lawrence's writing brings into question the notion of ‘Englishness’ itself. It also shows how Lawrence's aesthetic set him apart radically from both his Modernist contemporaries and his Romantic forbears. The starting-point of this enquiry into Lawrentian ‘difference’ is, for the purposes of this study, the poetry, its stylistic features, the ways in which it has been read, and, importantly, it involves a search for a critical language by which the poetry, and its ‘difference’, might be addressed. In doing so, this book takes recourse to Jacques Derrida's notions of ‘grammatology’ and ‘ecriture’, and Michel Foucault's notion of ‘discourse’. Referring to Lawrence's travel writings about Mexico and Italy, his essays on European and Etruscan art, on Mexican marketplaces and rituals, and American literature, and especially to his poetic manifesto, ‘The Poetry of the Present,’ this book shows how Lawrence was working towards both a theory and a practice that critiqued the post-Enlightenment unitary European self. The book also, radically, allows a post-colonial identity to inform the reading of the poetry, and to let the poems enter into a conversation with that identity.Less

From Trent to Vatican II: Historical and Theological Investigations

Raymond F. Bulman and Frederick J. Parrella (eds)

The 19th ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic Church was held in the city of Trent from 1545 to 1563. Its main object was the definitive determination of the doctrines of the Church in answer to ... More

The 19th ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic Church was held in the city of Trent from 1545 to 1563. Its main object was the definitive determination of the doctrines of the Church in answer to the Protestant heresies. A second object was the execution of a thorough reform of the inner life of the Church by removing numerous abuses that had developed. The result was an all-embracing system of theology, ethics, Christian behavior, religious practice, liturgy, organization, and Roman centralization. The second Vatican Council was convened by Pope John XXIII between 1962 and 1965. It marked a fundamental shift towards the modern Church, and many of the rules and practices established in the 16th century at Trent collapsed and were replaced. Among these were rigorous seminary training for priests, the practice of frequent confessions, fostering of Marian devotion, emphasis on the indissolubility of marriage, restrictions on lay ministry, and many others. In this book, a team of Catholic scholars offers a close examination of the full nature and scope of these changes. Each contributor offers an impartial investigation of a particular issue. Included are chapters on such topics as scripture and tradition, priestly formation, women, popular devotion, canon law, church music, marriage, and the universal catechism.Less