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Bonds of Secrecy: Law, Spirituality, and the Literature of Concealment in Early Medieval England - Couverture souple

Saltzman, Benjamin A.

 
9781512827903: Bonds of Secrecy: Law, Spirituality, and the Literature of Concealment in Early Medieval England
Couverture souple
ISBN 10 : 1512827908 ISBN 13 : 9781512827903
Editeur : University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025

Synopsis

What did it mean to keep a secret in early medieval England? It was a period during which the experience of secrecy was intensely bound to the belief that God knew all human secrets, yet the secrets of God remained unknowable to human beings. In Bonds of Secrecy, Benjamin A. Saltzman argues that this double-edged conception of secrecy and divinity profoundly affected the way believers acted and thought as subjects under the law, as the devout within monasteries, and as readers before books. One crucial way it did so was by forming an ethical relationship between the self and the world that was fundamentally different from its modern reflex. Whereas today the bearers of secrets might be judged for the consequences of their reticence or disclosure, Saltzman observes, in the early Middle Ages a person attempting to conceal a secret was judged for believing he or she could conceal it from God. In other words, to attempt to hide from God was to become ensnared in a serious sin, but to hide from the world while deliberately and humbly submitting to God's constant observation was often a hallmark of spiritual virtue. Looking to law codes and religious architecture, hagiographies and riddles, Bonds of Secrecy shows how legal and monastic institutions harnessed the pervasive and complex belief in God's omniscience to produce an intense culture of scrutiny and a radical ethics of secrecy founded on the individual's belief that nothing could be hidden from God. According to Saltzman, this ethics of secrecy not only informed early medieval notions of mental activity and ideas about the mind but also profoundly shaped the practices of literary interpretation in ways that can inform our own contemporary approaches to reading texts from the past.

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À propos de l'auteur

Benjamin A. Saltzman is Associate Professor of English at the University of Chicago.

Les informations fournies dans la section « A propos du livre » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.

Éditeur
University of Pennsylvania Press
Date d'édition
2025
Langue
anglais
ISBN 10 
1512827908
ISBN 13 
9781512827903
Reliure
Broché
Nombre de pages
360
Coordonnées du fabricant
non disponible
Personne responsable
non disponible