Présentation de l'éditeur
The Craft of Thought, first published in 1998, is a companion to Mary Carruthers' earlier study of memory in medieval culture, The Book of Memory. This more recent volume examines medieval monastic meditation as a discipline for making thoughts, and discusses its influence on literature, art, and architecture. In a process akin to today's 'creative' thinking, or 'cognition', this discipline recognises the essential roles of imagination and emotion in meditation. Deriving examples from a variety of late antique and medieval sources, with excursions into modern architectural memorials, this study emphasises meditation as an act of literary composition or invention, the techniques of which notably involved both words and making mental 'pictures' for thinking and composing.
Revue de presse
'… a wide-ranging text … illuminating for scholars of classical and medieval history, art history, and literature, as well as the more obvious disciplines of theology and rhetoric.' Natalie Grinnell, Envoi
'… Carruthers puts forward at a quick pace, a wealth of intuitions and ideas about the function of pictures which are liable to stimulate further research in the fields both of classics and of medieval studies.' Classical World
'This is a vigorous and learned book.' David Griffith, Expository Times
'… The Craft of Thought is an important contribution to our understanding of memory, the medieval world, and how our image of the world today both converges and diverges from our past. By showing how medieval monastic meditation influences literature, art, and architecture … [the book] underscores the importance of memory in bringing these disparate disciplines together as a unitary whole. Remarkable and learned … [this] is a book to be read and recollected again and again.' Lee Trepanier, VoegelinView (www.voegelinview.com)
Biographie de l'auteur
Mary Carruthers is the author of The Craft of Thought (Cambridge 1998) and The Medieval Craft of Memory (University of Pennsylvania 2002) as well as of The Book of Memory (1990 and 2008). She divides her time between New York City and Oxford, where she holds the positions of Remarque Professor of Literature at New York University and Fellow of All Souls College.
