Cloud of Unknowing and Other Works

In the fourteenth century there was a great flourishing of religious writing in English, both orthodox and heretical. Many of these works focused on Christ's Humanity and Passion, whereas The Cloud of Unknowing draws on radically different traditions to evoke an abstract, transcendent God, beyond human understanding. It calls for intense contemplation, motivated by love and stripped of all thought, as the way to the Divine. Yet the author's powerfully concrete language is deliberately at odds with this spiritual doctrine, making The Cloud a rich work full of intriguing contradictions that speaks to us with liveliness and wit today.This edition also includes three other works attributed to the same author, thought to be a priest and Carthusian monk: The Mystical Theology of Saint Denis, The Book of Privy Counselling and An Epistle on Prayer.
This collection includes The Cloud of Unknowing, The Mystical Theology of Saint Denis, The Book of Privy Counselling, and An Epistle on Prayer. Against a tradition of devotional writings which focussed on knowing God through Christ's Passion and his humanity, these texts describe a transcendent God who exists beyond human knowledge and human language. These four texts are at the heart of medival mystical theology in their call for contion, calm, and above all, love, as the way to understand the Divine. This collection includes The Cloud of Unknowing, The Mystical Theology of Saint Denis, The Book of Privy Counselling, and An Epistle on Prayer.
This collection includes The Cloud of Unknowing, The Mystical Theology of Saint Denis, The Book of Privy Counselling, and An Epistle on Prayer.
In the fourteenth century there was a great flourishing of religious writings in English, both orthodox and heretical. Many of these works focused on Christ's Passion and humanity, whereasThe Cloud of Unknowing describes an abstract, transcendent God beyond human knowledge and human language. Drawing upon radically different traditions, it is a rich work full of intriguing contradictions that speaks to us with liveliness and wit even today. The unknown author, thought to be a priest and Carthusian monk, is also believed to have written the other three works in this volume:The Mystical Theology of Saint Denis, The Book of Privy Counselling, andAn Epistle on Prayer, which, together with The Cloud of Unknowing, are the four texts at the core of medieval mystical theology.This Penguin Classics edition includes full explanatory notes, suggestions for further reading, an appendix that reproduces the Middle English text of a section of The Mystical Theology of Saint Denis, and an introduction that places the texts within the context of medieval religious writing.
In the fourteenth century there was a great flourishing of religious writings in English, both orthodox and heretical. Many of these works focused on Christ's Passion and humanity, whereasThe Cloud of Unknowing describes an abstract, transcendent God beyond human knowledge and human language. Drawing upon radically different traditions, it is a rich work full of intriguing contradictions that speaks to us with liveliness and wit even today. The unknown author, thought to be a priest and Carthusian monk, is also believed to have written the other three works in this volume:The Mystical Theology of Saint Denis, The Book of Privy Counselling, andAn Epistle on Prayer, which, together with The Cloud of Unknowing, are the four texts at the core of medieval mystical theology.This Penguin Classics edition includes full explanatory notes, suggestions for further reading, an appendix that reproduces the Middle English text of a section of The Mystical Theology of Saint Denis, and an introduction that places the texts within the context of medieval religious writing.