Professor’s book corner

Posted by admin on Dec 1, 2009 in Arts & Culture | 0 comments

The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature by C. S. Lewis, 1964
This book (based on a course that Lewis gave) examines the medieval view of the universe and suggests that its elimination from Western civilization was premature and indefensible.
 
The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the non-rational factor in the idea of the divine and its relation to the rational by Rudolf Otto, Second edition 1950, [orig. 1917]
 Otto’s description of the human encounter with the Mystery that is both tremendous and overwhelming reverberates with me every time I read his book.
 
The Likeness of Christ: Being an Inquiry into the Verisimilitude of the Received Likeness of Our Blessed Lord by Thomas Heaphy 1880
Heaphy adduces curious evidence for the answer to the question, “What did Jesus look like?” – evidence that he gathered himself, at considerable cost and with great effort. The book is old now, and quite rare.

The Unity of Philosophical Experience by Etienne Gilson, 1937
The passionate defense of a classical realist view of the world, in contrast to the “thin one” that emerged in the modern era, is persuasive. Its author was vital in the establishment of the Institute of Medieval Studies in Toronto.
 
Christianity: Lineaments of a Sacred Tradition by Philip Sherrard, 1998
I read this book on a flight (returning home from England) and was completed captured by the Platonist perspective from which it is written – I did not know that Platonist tendencies were within me.