The Monk and the Book

The Monk and the Book
Author :
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Total Pages : 328
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780226899022
ISBN-13 : 0226899020
Rating : 4/5 (22 Downloads)

Book Synopsis The Monk and the Book by : Megan Hale Williams

Download or read book The Monk and the Book written by Megan Hale Williams and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-09-15 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 infrastructure—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 history—including the work of Bourdieu, Foucault, and Roger Chartier—Williams proposes new interpretations that remove obstacles to understanding the life and legacy of the saint. Examining issues such as the construction of Jerome’s literary persona, the form and contents of his library, and the intellectual framework of his commentaries, Williams shows that Jerome’s 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."—Eamon Duffy, New York Review of Books


The Monk and the Book Related Books

The Monk and the Book
Language: en
Pages: 328
Authors: Megan Hale Williams
Categories: Religion
Type: BOOK - Published: 2008-09-15 - Publisher: University of Chicago Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In the West, monastic ideals and scholastic pursuits are complementary; monks are popularly imagined copying classics, preserving learning through the Middle Ag
Monks, Money, and Morality
Language: en
Pages: 265
Authors: Christoph Brumann
Categories: Religion
Type: BOOK - Published: 2021-04-22 - Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Vibrantly engaging contemporary Buddhist lives, this book focuses on the material and financial relations of contemporary monks, temples, and laypeople. It show
Buddhism in Contemporary Tibet
Language: en
Pages: 224
Authors: Melvyn C. Goldstein
Categories: Religion
Type: BOOK - Published: 2023-09-01 - Publisher: Univ of California Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Following the upheavals of the Cultural Revolution, the People's Republic of China gradually permitted the renewal of religious activity. Tibetans, whose tradit
The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Buddhism
Language: en
Pages: 761
Authors: Michael K. Jerryson
Categories: Philosophy
Type: BOOK - Published: 2017 - Publisher: Oxford University Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Buddhism offers a comprehensive collection of work by leading scholars in the field. They examine the historical development
Magic in the Cloister
Language: en
Pages: 390
Authors: Sophie Page
Categories: Religion
Type: BOOK - Published: 2015-06-26 - Publisher: Penn State Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

During the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries a group of monks with occult interests donated what became a remarkable collection of more than thirty