1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910149580103321

Autore

Davis Robert Glenn

Titolo

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

Pubbl/distr/stampa

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

©2017

ISBN

0-8232-7214-1

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (208 p.)

Disciplina

241/.4

Soggetti

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

RELIGION / Theology

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di contenuto

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

Sommario/riassunto

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.