The Idea Of The Labyrinth From Classical Antiquity Through The Middle Ages

Ancient and medieval labyrinths embody paradox, according to Penelope Reed Doob. Their structure allows a double perspective—the baffling, fragmented prospect confronting the maze-treader within, and the comprehensive vision available to those without. Mazes simultaneously assert order and chaos, artistry and confusion, articulated clarity and bewildering complexity, perfected pattern and hesitant process. In this handsomely illustrated book, Doob reconstructs from a variety of literary and visual sources the idea of the labyrinth from the classical period through the Middle Ages. Doob first examines several complementary traditions of the maze topos, showing how ancient historical and geographical writings generate metaphors in which the labyrinth signifies admirable complexity, while poetic texts tend to suggest that the labyrinth is a sign of moral duplicity. She then describes two common models of the labyrinth and explores their formal implications: the unicursal model, with no false turnings, found almost universally in the visual arts; and the multicursal model, with blind alleys and dead ends, characteristic of literary texts. This paradigmatic clash between the labyrinths of art and of literature becomes a key to the metaphorical potential of the maze, as Doob's examination of a vast array of materials from the classical period through the Middle Ages suggests. She concludes with linked readings of four "labyrinths of words": Virgil's Aeneid, Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy, Dante's Divine Comedy, and Chaucer's House of Fame, each of which plays with and transforms received ideas of the labyrinth as well as reflecting and responding to aspects of the texts that influenced it. Doob not only provides fresh theoretical and historical perspectives on the labyrinth tradition, but also portrays a complex medieval aesthetic that helps us to approach structurally elaborate early works. Readers in such fields as Classical literature, Medieval Studies, Renaissance Studies, comparative literature, literary theory, art history, and intellectual history will welcome this wide-ranging and illuminating book.

In literature, labyrinths can represent many things: complication and difficulty, interconnectedness, creativity, and even literature itself. This new title discusses the role of the labyrinth in “The Garden of Forking Paths,” Great Expectations, Ulysses, and many others. The Labyrinth unravels this theme for literature students through 19 critical essays.

The definitive work on the labyrinth throughout history. The author traces developments in the architectural, astrological, mythological and socio-political significance of this fascinating cultural phenomenon, from the Bronze Age to the present day.

Mazes and Labyrinths is a look into the origin and mystery of mazes. From ancient stone carvings, Minoan palaces to today's hedge-maze, Matthews chronicles the history of the maze. With over 140 illustrations.

A tourist visiting the famous cathedral at Chartres might be surprised to discover an enormous labyrinth embedded in the thirteenth-century floor. Why is it there? In this fascinating book Craig Wright explores the complex symbolism of the labyrinth in architecture, religious thought, music, and dance from the Middle Ages to the present. The mazes incorporated into church floors and illustrating religious books were symbolic of an epic journey through this sinful world to salvation. A savior figure typically led the way along this harrowing spiritual path. Wright looks at other meanings of the maze as well, from religious dancing on church labyrinths to pagan maze rituals outside the church. He demonstrates that the theme inherent in spiritual mazes is also present in medieval song, in the Armed Man Masses of the Renaissance, and in compositions of the Enlightenment, including the works of J. S. Bach. But the thread that binds the maze to the church, to music, and to dance also ties it to the therapeutic labyrinth that proliferates today. For as this richly interdisciplinary history reveals, the maze of the "new age" spiritualists also traces its lineage to the ancient myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. While the hero of the maze may change from one culture to the next, the symbol endures.

Introducing a new concept of urban space, Cities and Metaphors encourages a theoretical realignment of how the city is experienced, thought and discussed. In the context of ‘Islamic city’ studies, relying on reasoning and rational thinking has reduced descriptive, vivid features of the urban space into a generic scientific framework. Phenomenological characteristics have consequently been ignored rather than integrated into theoretical components. The book argues that this results from a lack of appropriate conceptual vocabulary in our global body of scholarly literature. It challenges existing theories, introduces and applies the concept of Hezar-tu (‘a thousand insides’) to rethink the spaces in historic cores of Fez, Isfahan and Tunis. This tool constructs a staging post towards a different articulation of urban space based on spatial, physical, virtual, symbolic and social edges and thresholds; nodes of sociospatial relationships; zones of containment; state of intermediacy; and, thus, a logic of ambiguity rather than determinacy. Presenting alternative narrations of paths through sequential discovery of spaces, this book brings the sensual features of urban space into the focus. The book finally shows that concepts derived from local contexts enable us to tailor our methods and theoretical structures to the idiosyncrasies of each city while retaining the global commonalities of all. Hence, in broader terms, it contributes to a growing awareness that urban studies should be more inclusive by bringing the diverse global contexts of cities into the body of our urban knowledge.

In “The Making of Europe”: Essays in Honour of Robert Bartlett, a group of distinguished contributors analyse processes of conquest, colonization and cultural change in Europe in the tenth to fourteenth centuries. They assess and develop theses presented by Robert Bartlett in his famous book of that name. The geographical scope extends from Iceland to the Islamic Mediterranean, from Spain to Poland. Themes covered range from law to salt production, from aristocratic culture in the Christian West to Islamic views of Christendom. Like the volume that it honours, the present book extends our understanding of both medieval and present day Europe. Contributors are Sverre Bagge, Piotr Górecki, John Hudson, Hugh Kennedy, Simon MacLean, William Ian Miller, Esther Pascua Echegaray, Ana Rodriguez, Matthew Strickland, John Tolan, Bjorn Weiler, and Stephen D. White. This is an excellent collection of essays that do justice to Rob Bartlett’s inexhaustible book, The Making of Europe. Rather than merely repeating and venerating Bartlett’s ideas, the essays engage creatively and critically with them and spark new ideas and insights that cast a flood of light on the culture of medieval Europe. The result is a worthy tribute that will send readers scurrying back to Bartlett to quarry yet more nuggets from The Making of Europe, still fizzing with intellectual brio some twenty years after its publication. Stuart Airlie, University of Glasgow October 2015

This book is a rigorous and broad update of the state of the art in the investigation of Old and Middle English. The volume, written by some of the best known experts in this field, addresses different issues, such as etymology, manuscript sources, and medieval literary traditions, among others. Its contents will be particularly useful for those interested in the different perspectives of current research in the field, exhorting the reader to consider the relationship of the medieval textual heritage and language with both its contemporary medieval audience and the readers of the 21st century. This book will appeal to specialists in Old and Middle English language and literature and also to university students. In contrast with monographs, which focus on a specific aspect, these essays allow a broader panorama of what is being done and the approaches currently being used.