Alastair Minnis's scholarship characteristically integrates reading strategies from literary criticism with the history of ideas. His work is deeply informed by an interest in medieval philosophy and theology. He explores the ways in which conceptions of paradise were created in the later Middle Ages. Minnis's approach is marked by a synthesis of close reading and a broad historical and philosophical perspective.
'Phantom limb pain' designates the sensations which emanate from limbs that in reality are missing. First coined in the American Civil War, Alastair Minnis traces the medieval parallels for this concept. Is a complete body necessary for personhood? These issues were as absorbing for medieval thinkers as they are for neuroscientists today.
In From Eden to Eternity, Alastair Minnis argues that Eden afforded an extraordinary amount of creative space to late medieval theologians, painters, and poets as they tried to understand the place that God had deemed worthy of the creature made in His image.
This unique volume offers for the first time a comprehensive introduction to the literary theory and criticism produced during the Middle Ages. The essays cover all the main traditions in Medieval Latin, Byzantine Greek, and the major European vernaculars, as well as the humanist debates on literature and its uses.