The Strait Gate : Thresholds and Power in Western History / Daniel Jütte (Jutte).

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Jütte (Jutte), Daniel, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Doorways--Religious aspects.

Doorways.

Doorways--Social aspects.

Social history.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (387 p.)

Place of Publication:

New Haven, CT : Yale University Press, [2015]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

A prize-winning scholar offers a sweeping exploration of the role doors have played in history Exploring a chapter not yet probed in the cultural history of the West, The Strait Gate demonstrates how doors, gates, and related technologies such as the key and the lock have shaped the way we perceive and navigate the domestic and urban spaces that surround us in our everyday lives. Jütte reveals how doors have served as sites of power, exclusion, and inclusion-and, by extension, as metaphors for salvation-in the course of Western history. This book makes it clear that doors, more than any other parts of the house, are the objects onto which we project our ideas of and anxieties about security, privacy, and shelter. Without doors, of course, houses could not exist. But even though we each walk through doorways well over a hundred times a day, we typically pay little attention to the doors we encounter. We regard them simply as a means of entering or leaving a building or room. Yet when our doors stop working as they should-when we find that we cannot lock or open them, for instance-we react with discomfort and anxiety. Drawing on a wide range of archival, literary, and visual sources, as well as on research literature across various disciplines and languages, Jütte pays particular attention to the history of the practices that have developed over the centuries in order to handle and control doors in everyday life.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE. "I Am the Door" Portals of Salvation and Status

CHAPTER TWO. The Power of the Keys

CHAPTER THREE. "Whence Is That Knocking?" Precarious Passages

CHAPTER FOUR. Reading Doors

CHAPTER FIVE. The "City's Eyes" Gates and the Urban History of Europe

EPILOGUE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ILLUSTRATION CREDITS

INDEX

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 29. Feb 2020)

ISBN:

0-300-21640-8

OCLC:

919432145