Description
About the Author
Keith D. Lilley is Senior Lecturer in Human Geography, Queen's University, Belfast. He is the author of many books and articles, including Urban Life in the Middle Ages, 1000-1450 (2002).
Reviews
City and Cosmos provides an exciting bird's-eye view of urban life in the Middle Ages, when the urban body was connected with the body of Christ, and city, cosmos and man were seen to be linked through sacred geometry and harmonic proportion. Keith Lilley's compelling account is a reminder that for many medieval Christians, the city was a reflection of God's beauty and presence in the world, a physical manifestation of the beauty of the body of the universe created by God, and a model of the world to come. - Alessandro Scafi It is a pleasure, as a literary scholar, to follow Lilley's assertion of the influence of medieval root-two geometric principles and their intersection with Classical cosmological thought, Christian scriptures, and the social practices of exclusion and pageantry on the formation of medieval urban spaces. Richly illustrative and drawing on an impressive array of textual, cartographic, and material evidence, Lilley's City and Cosmos is a significant contribution to the emerging interdisciplinary field of social geography, critical theory, and textual study. Lilley's expansive scholarship establishes the deeply symbolic connection between medieval conceptions of body, city, and cosmos and the way in which the very streets mark this habitus of thought. - Meg Roland, Associate Professor of English
Book Information
ISBN 9781861894410
Author Keith D. Lilley
Format Hardback
Page Count 248
Imprint Reaktion Books
Publisher Reaktion Books