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A Complex Delight
"A Complex Delight is the work of a seasoned and mature scholar offering us a careful and nuanced study that pushes us into a new territory of reflection while providing an exciting way of looking at the subject. The work will make a vital contribution to the historical analysis of culture and religion. This book is a wonderful intellectual and visual romp that will spark the imagination and satisfy the mind's quest for fresh historical understanding."—Wilson Yates, Professor Emeritus of Religion, Art and Society, United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities "Margaret Miles' interdisciplinary study of the 'concealing and revealing' of the breast in art during the Renaissance and Baroque styles weaves together relevant issues in the history of art and theology. She offers a study grounded in solid research with informed commentary and her handling of the textual and visual evidence from these cultures is objective, respectful and decorous. This book will be of considerable interest to students of the visual culture, religious imagery, and social history of Early Modern Europe."—Heidi J. Hornik, Professor of Italian Renaissance and Baroque Art History, Baylor University
Desire and Delight
Augustine's Confessions is one of the most powerfully evocative autobiographies of the Christian West. It recounts the complex experiences through which this formative theologian came to renounce the compulsive sexual practice of his youth, reinvesting his attention and affection in a disciplined spirituality. The Confessions is explicitly about desire, longing, passion--physical and spiritual. It narrates Augustine's desperate attempt to get, and to keep, the greatest degree of pleasure. Even his conversion to Catholic Christianity is narrated as a seduction to continence, and the model of spirituality he articulated relied intimately and profoundly on his sexual experience. Desire and Deli...
Image as Insight
Miles's pathbreaking work shows how art and architecture have shaped religious understanding throughout the history of Christianity.
Practicing Christianity
Men and women throughout history have learned to shape their lives around Christian ideas, attitudes, and values in many different ways. They have been helped by liturgies, sermons, visual imagery, religious drama, and hymns. But perhaps the most important sources were the classic devotional manuals, like The Imitation of Christ and The Pilgrim's Progress, many of which are still in use today. In this book, Margaret Miles subjects these devotional manuals to a detailed critique. Miles speaks as a scholar, as a Christian living in the modern world, and as a woman, and she ends by discussing the relevance of her findings to Christian life today.
Carnal Knowing
When we look at Michelangelo's David, we see a nakedness that expresses physical prowess, self-knowledge, and spiritual discipline. What do we see when we look at Hans Baldung's Eve, the Serpent, and Death or Master Francke's Martyrdom of Saint Barbara? Why should those naked female images symbolize wantonness and shame? How do ideas about nakedness formed at the dawn of Christianity continue to shape today's sexual values? What must women do to take their bodies back? This revolutionary study by Margaret R. Miles, formerly Bussey Professor of Historical Theology at the Harvard Divinity School and author of the acclaimed Images as Insight, sifts through centuries of Christian writing and religious ritual and, above all, Western art to reveal the origins of our attitudes toward women's bodies and their encoded meanings. Broad enough to encompass fourth-century descriptions of Christian baptism and contemporary theories of representation, Carnal Knowing is a brilliant, startling work of scholarship whose implications extend far beyond the academy to the way we live and see.
Augustine and the Fundamentalist's Daughter
In Augustine and the Fundamentalist's Daughter, Margaret Miles weaves her memoirs together with reflections on Augustine's Confessions. Having read and reread Augustine's Confessions, in admiration as well as frustration, over the past thirty-five years, Miles brings her memories of childhood and youth in a fundamentalist home into conversation with Augustine's effort to understand his life. The result is a fascinating work of autobiographical and theological reflection. Moreover, this project brings together a rare combination of insights into fundamentalist convictions and habits of mind, as well as into the differences among fundamentalists. Such reflections are especially urgent in this time in which fundamentalism is prominent in political and social discourse.
Seeing and Believing
Enriched by a cultural studies approach, a deep understanding of religion and history, and a love for the movies, Seeing and Believing explores what popular films of the 1980s and 1990s say about religion and the values by which we live.
The Word Made Flesh
This outstanding textbook offers an original history of Christian thought, asking what it has meant over the centuries to participate in the religion of the Word made flesh. Traces Christian ideas, conversations, experiences and practices from the first century through to the dawn of modernity at the end of the eighteenth century. Presents an inclusive history, considering the critical roles of women and religious ‘others’– dissenting Christians, Jews and Muslims – in shaping Christian thought. Sets Christian ideas in the context of conversations, controversies and concrete circumstances. Demonstrates the importance of liturgical and devotional exercises to the practice of Christianity. Treats words, images, music and architecture all as primary evidence of Christian traditions. Is accompanied by a CD Rom containing hundreds of visuals to support the theories and examples discussed throughout the volume.
