Author: Miri Rubin File Type: pdf This penetrating explanation of medieval European religious experience is a revealing description of how Mary became so embedded in our culture that it is impossible to conceive of Western history without her. Draws on a wide range of sources--including music, poetry, theology, art, scripture, and miracle tales. Of three chapters the first, The Global Middle Ages, considers the current historiographical frame for the study of religious cultures and suggests ways in which our practice can be made more global. Mary, and the Others examines the polemical situations around Mary, and the location of Mustims and Jews within them. The third chapter, Emotions and Selves, tracks the sentimental education experienced by Europeans through devotional encounters with the figure of the Virgin Mary in word, image and sound. Each year one scholar of world fame is invited to present lectures in the framework of the Natalie Zemon Davis Annual Lecture Series at the Central European University, Budapest. This is the second volume in the series of published lectures.

Author: Cormac McCarthy File Type: pdf he searing, postapocalyptic novel destined to become Cormac McCarthys masterpiece.A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they dont know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged foodand each other. The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, each the others world entire, are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation. From the Trade Paperback edition.Amazon.com ReviewBest known for his Border Trilogy, hailed in the San Francisco Chronicle as an American classic to stand with the finest literary achievements of the century, Cormac McCarthy has written ten rich and often brutal novels, including the bestselling No Country for Old Men, and The Road. Profoundly dark, told in spare, searing prose, The Road is a post-apocalyptic masterpiece, one of the best books weve read this year, but in case you need a second (and expert) opinion, we asked Dennis Lehane, author of equally rich, occasionally bleak and brutal novels, to read it and give us his take. Read his glowing review below. --Daphne Durham hrGuest Reviewer Dennis LehaneCormac McCarthy sets his new novel, The Road, in a post-apocalyptic blight of gray skies that drizzle ash, a world in which all matter of wildlife is extinct, starvation is not only prevalent but nearly all-encompassing, and marauding bands of cannibals roam the environment with pieces of human flesh stuck between their teeth. If this sounds oppressive and dispiriting, it is. McCarthy may have just set to paper the definitive vision of the world after nuclear war, and in this recent age of relentless saber-rattling by the global powers, its not much of a leap to feel his vision could be not far off the mark nor, sadly, right around the corner. Stealing across this horrific (and thats the only word for it) landscape are an unnamed man and his emaciated son, a boy probably around the age of ten. It is the love the father feels for his son, a love as deep and acute as his grief, that could surprise readers of McCarthys previous work. McCarthys Gnostic impressions of mankind have left very little place for love. In fact that greatest love affair in any of his novels, I would argue, occurs between the Billy Parham and the wolf in The Crossing. But here the love of a desperate father for his sickly son transcends all else. McCarthy has always written about the battle between light and darkness the darkness usually comprises 99.9% of the world, while any illumination is the weak shaft thrown by a penlight running low on batteries. In The Road, those batteries are almost out--the entire world is, quite literally, dying--so the final affirmation of hope in the novels closing pages is all the more shocking and maybe all the more enduring as the boy takes all of his fathers (and McCarthys) rage at the hopeless folly of man and lays it down, lifting up, in its place, the oddest of all things faith. --Dennis Lehane hrFrom Publishers WeeklyMcCarthys latest novel, a frightening apocalyptic vision, is narrated by a nameless man, one of the few survivors of an unspecified civilization-ending catastrophe. He and his young son are trekking along a treacherous highway, starving and freezing, trying to avoid roving cannibal armies. The tale, and their lives, are saved from teetering over the edge of bleakness thanks to the mans fierce belief that they are the good guys who are preserving the light of humanity. In this stark, effective production, Stechschulte gives the father an appropriately harsh, weary voice that sways little from its numbed register except to urge on the weakening boy or soothe his fears after an encounter with barbarians. When they uncover some vestige of the former world, the man recalls its vanished wonder with an aching nostalgia that makes the listeners heart swell. Stechschulte portrays the son with a mournful, slightly breathy tone that emphasizes the childs whininess, making him much less sympathetic than his resourceful father. With no music or effects interrupting Stechschultes carefully measured pace and gruff, straightforward delivery, McCarthys darkly poetic prose comes alive in a way that will transfix listeners. Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.