The Monk and the BookAuthor :
Hardback
Published : Friday 15 December 2006
Description
In the West, monastic ideals and scholastic pursuits are complementary; monks are popularly imagined copying classics, preserving learning through the Middle Ages, and establishing the first universities. But this dual identity is not without its contradictions. While monasticism emphasizes the virtues of poverty, chastity, and humility, the scholar, by contrast, requires expensive infrastructureâ?"a library, a workplace, and the means of disseminating his work. In The Monk and the Book, Megan Hale Williams argues that Saint Jerome was the first to represent biblical study as a mode of asceticism appropriate for an inhabitant of a Christian monastery, thus pioneering the enduring linkage of monastic identities and institutions with scholarship. Revisiting Jerome with the analytical tools of recent cultural historyâ?"including the work of Bourdieu, Foucault, and Roger Chartierâ?"Williams proposes new interpretations that remove obstacles to understanding the life and legacy of the saint. Examining issues such as the construction of Jeromeâ?Ts literary persona, the form and contents of his library, and the intellectual framework of his commentaries, Williams shows that Jeromeâ?Ts textual and exegetical work on the Hebrew scriptures helped to construct a new culture of learning. This fusion of the identities of scholar and monk, Williams shows, continues to reverberate in the culture of the modern university. "[Williams] has written a fascinating study, which provides a series of striking insights into the career of one of the most colorful and influential figures in Christian antiquity. Jerome's Latin Bible would become the foundational text for the intellectual development of the West, providing words for the deepest aspirations and most intensely held convictions of an entire civilization. Williams's book does much to illumine the circumstances in which that fundamental text was produced, and reminds us that great ideas, like great people, have particular origins, and their own complex settings."â?"Eamon Duffy, New York Review of BooksA
You may also like ...
by
Paperback
07 Oct 2014
History of religion
€28.08
Extended stock – Dispatch 5-7 days
by
Hardback
15 Dec 2006
History of religion
€93.60
Extended stock – Dispatch 5-7 days
by
Hardback
16 Nov 2017
Philosophical traditions and schools of thought
€85.41
Extended stock – Dispatch 5-7 days
by
Paperback
15 Mar 2013
Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000
€22.22
Extended stock – Dispatch 5-7 days
Reviews