1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910782728303321

Autore

Hill John Spencer <1943->

Titolo

Infinity, faith and time [[electronic resource] ] : Christian humanism and Renaissance literature / / John Spencer Hill

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Montreal, : McGill-Queen's University Press, 1997

ISBN

1-282-85471-2

9786612854712

0-7735-6681-3

Descrizione fisica

xiv, 200 p. ; ; 24 cm

Collana

McGill-Queen's studies in the history of religion. Series two

Disciplina

809.8/94/0903

Soggetti

European literature - Renaissance, 1450-1600 - History and criticism

Humanism in literature

Infinite in literature

Time in literature

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front Matter -- Contents -- Preface -- The Expanding Universe -- Fides Quærens Intellectum -- The Aristotelian Cosmos -- Nicholas of Cusa and the New Astronomy -- Rational Spirituality and Empirical Rationalism -- Chorismos and Methexis: Pascal, Traherne, Milton -- Time -- Chronos and Kairos -- Inner Time: Augustine and Bergson -- Time, Literature, and Literary Criticism -- Time in Shakespeare -- Heilsgeschischte: Typology and the Helix of History -- Notes Toward a Protestant Poetic -- Translations from Pascal’s Pensées -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

In Part 1 Hill examines the effect of the idea of spatial infinity on seventeenth-century literature, arguing that the metaphysical cosmology of Nicholas of Cusa provided Renaissance writers, such as Pascal, Traherne, and Milton, with a way to construe the vastness of space as the symbol of human spiritual potential. Focusing on time in Part 2, Hill reveals that, faced with the inexorability of time, Christian humanists turned to St Augustine to develop a philosophy that interpreted temporal passage as the necessary condition of experience without making it the essence or ultimate measure of human purpose.



Hill's analysis centres on Shakespeare, whose experiments with the shapes of time comprise a gallery of heuristic time-centred fictions that attempt to explain the consequences of human existence in time. Infinity, Faith, and Time reveals that the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were a period during which individuals were able, with more success than in later times, to make room for new ideas without rejecting old beliefs.