The Cloud of Unknowing and Other Works

by Unknown

• ISBN13: 9780140447620
• ISBN10: 0140447628
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-01-29
• Publisher: Penguin Classics

Summary

In the fourteenth century there was a great flourishing of religious writings in English, both orthodox and heretical. Many of these works focused on Christ's Passion and humanity, whereas The Cloud of Unknowingdescribes an abstract, transcendent God beyond human knowledge and human language. Drawing upon radically different traditions, it is a rich work full of intriguing contradictions that speaks to us with liveliness and wit even today. The unknown author, thought to be a priest and Carthusian monk, is also believed to have written the other three works in this volume: The Mystical Theology of Saint Denis, The Book of Privy Counselling, and An Epistle on Prayer, which, together with The Cloud of Unknowing, are the four texts at the core of medieval mystical theology. This Penguin Classics edition includes full explanatory notes, suggestions for further reading, an appendix that reproduces the Middle English text of a section of The Mystical Theology of Saint Denis, and an introduction that places the texts within the context of medieval religious writing.

Author Biography

A. C. Spearing is professor of English at the University of Virginia. He has published widely on medieval literature and edited Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love for Penguin Classics.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction
Further Reading
Note on the Text
The Mystical Theology of St Denis	p. 1
The Cloud of Unknowing	p. 11
The Book of Privy Counselling	p. 103
An Epistle on Prayer	p. 135
Notes	p. 143
Middle English text of The Mystical Theology of Saint Denis, chapter 2	p. 158
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