Reading Medieval Anchoritism
Ideology and Spiritual Practices
Distributed for University of Wales Press
190 pages
|
6 x 9
|
© 2012
- Contents
- Review Quotes
Table of Contents
Contents
Series Editors’ Preface
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction
Part I. Anchoritic Spirituality in Isolation: The English Anchoritic Guides
1. Introducing the Guides
2. Anchoritic Enclosure
3. Anchoritic Solitude and Sociability
Part II. Anchoritic Spirituality in Context: English Anchoritism and the Wider Medieval World
4. Anchoritism and Asceticism
5. Anchoritism and Contemplative Experience
Conclusion
Notes
Appendix: Guidance Text Overview
Select Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction
Part I. Anchoritic Spirituality in Isolation: The English Anchoritic Guides
1. Introducing the Guides
2. Anchoritic Enclosure
3. Anchoritic Solitude and Sociability
Part II. Anchoritic Spirituality in Context: English Anchoritism and the Wider Medieval World
4. Anchoritism and Asceticism
5. Anchoritism and Contemplative Experience
Conclusion
Notes
Appendix: Guidance Text Overview
Select Bibliography
Index
Review Quotes
Lara Farina, West Virginia University | Speculum
“A comprehensive and useful overview of guidance texts for anchorites, one that pulls together the substantial amount of work on anchorites and anchoritic literature produced in the last twenty-five years. . . . Hughes-Edwards brings relevant and up-to-date scholarship to bear throughout, and her bibliography is thorough, if not exhaustive.”
Derek Pearsall, University of York
“Reading Medieval Anchoritism is comprehensive, systematic, and thorough. The first study to trace anchoritic ideology over five centuries, it show s that the goal of the anchoritic was not extreme suffering and privation but heightened contemplative experience. It amasses important evidence that anchorites had a range of acceptable social functions and modifies scholarship’s current image of anchoritic enclosure as merely social death.”
Robert J. Hasenfratz, University of Connecticut
“In this impressive study, Hughes-Edwards writes a new history of medieval English anchoritism that rivals the work of Warren’s landmark Anchorites and their Patrons in Medieval England. She traces, patiently and sensitively, the evolution of five centuries of anchoritic ideology, placing it in the context of a wide range of rarely considered, but remarkably innovative, theological texts. The results are profound and surprising. No scholar of medieval anchoritism or indeed the history of medieval ascetism can afford to ignore this book.”
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