Calvin and perception in early modern visual culture / AnnMarie M. Bridges

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bridges, AnnMarie M., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Calvin, Jean, 1509-1564--Criticism and interpretation.

Calvin, Jean.

Calvin, Jean, 1509-1564. Institutio Christianae religionis.

Perception in art.

Perception in literature.

Calvin, Jean, 1509-1564.

Institutio Christianae religionis (Calvin, Jean).

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2026

Summary:

"Calvin and Perception in Early Modern Visual Culture is the first monograph to return John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion (1559) to its original visual culture. AnnMarie Bridges draws on early modern optics, art theory, rhetoric, psychology, and religion to reconstruct the perceptual assumptions of Calvin's earliest readers. Her study reveals the Institutes' unrecognized concern with 'perception'-pre-conscious processing believed to occur in the imagination, capable of distorting sense experience before conscious thought could even occur. Illuminating Calvin's most striking visual metaphors-from the spectacles of scripture to the factory of idols-and through close readings of topics like accommodation, idolatry, faith, and Calvin's Latin prose, Bridges advocates a paradigm shift in how we read Calvin's most cited work, displacing 'knowledge' in favor of 'perception versus delusion.' In so doing, her study invites reflection on perceptual instability in our own cultural moment, where the challenge is not only to know what is true, but even to perceive what is real"-- Cambridge Core

Contents:

Introduction : seeing perception in the Institutes

How to see in early modern Europe

True spectatorship : accommodation, piety, and the Institutes’ perceptual ideal

Blind idolatry : imagination and the perceptual effects of sin

Corrective lenses : faith, doctrine, and perceiving God after the Fall

Reforming perception : the Institutes’ Latin rhetoric as straightedge prose

Conclusion : against delusion, for perception

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index

Online resource; title from PDF title page (Cambridge Core, viewed June 8, 2026)

Other Format:

Print version: Bridges, AnnMarie M. Calvin and perception in early modern visual culture

ISBN:

9781009562010

1009562010

9781009562027

1009562029

OCLC:

1592920076

Publisher Number:

CIPO000385694

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license