The Weight of Love : Affect, Ecstasy, and Union in the Theology of Bonaventure / Robert Glenn Davis.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Davis, Robert Glenn, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Love--Religious aspects--Christianity--History of doctrines--Middle Ages, 600-1500.

Love.

Bonaventure.

Dionysius the Areopagite.

Francis of Assisi.

affect and emotion.

affective meditation.

affective turn.

medieval devotional literature.

mysticism.

Local Subjects:

Bonaventure.

Dionysius the Areopagite.

Francis of Assisi.

affect and emotion.

affective meditation.

affective turn.

medieval devotional literature.

mysticism.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (208 p.)

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Fordham University Press, [2016]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Supplementing theological interpretation with historical, literary, and philosophical perspectives, The Weight of Love analyzes the nature and role of affectivity in medieval Christian devotion through an original interpretation of the writings of the Franciscan theologian Bonaventure. It intervenes in two crucial developments in medieval Christian thought and practice: the renewal of interest in the corpus of Dionysius the Areopagite in thirteenth-century Paris and the proliferation of new forms of affective meditation focused on the passion of Christ in the later Middle Ages. Through the exemplary life and death of Francis of Assisi, Robert Glenn Davis examines how Bonaventure traces a mystical itinerary culminating in the meditant’s full participation in Christ’s crucifixion. For Bonaventure, Davis asserts, this death represents the becoming-body of the soul, the consummation and transformation of desire into the crucified body of Christ.In conversation with the contemporary historiography of emotions and critical theories of affect, The Weight of Love contributes to scholarship on medieval devotional literature by urging and offering a more sustained engagement with the theological and philosophical elaborations of affectus. It also contributes to debates around the “affective turn” in the humanities by placing it within this important historical context, challenging modern categories of affect and emotion.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Introduction: Weighing Affect in Medieval Christian Devotion

Chapter 1. The Seraphic Doctrine: Love and Knowledge in the Dionysian Hierarchy

Chapter 2. Affect, Cognition, and the Natural Motion of the Will

Chapter 3. Elemental Motion and the Force of Union

Chapter 4. Hierarchy and Excess in the Itinerarium mentis in Deum

Chapter 5. The Exemplary Bodies of the Legenda Maior

Conclusion. A Corpus, in Sum

Acknowledgments

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Title from eBook information screen..

This eBook is made available Open Access under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 23. Jul 2020)

ISBN:

0-8232-7214-1

OCLC:

1030818003