The Folly of the Cross: The Passion of Christ in Theology and the Arts in Early Modernity (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780190876005)

The Folly of the Cross is the fourth book in Richard Viladesau's series examining the aesthetics and theology of the cross through Christian history. Previous volumes have brought the story up through the Baroque era. This new book examines the reception of the message of the cross from the European Enlightenment to the turn of the twentieth century.

The opening chapters set the stage in the transition from the Baroque to the Classical eras, describing the changing intellectual and cultural paradigms of the time. Viladesau examines the theology of the cross in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the aesthetic mediation of the cross in music and the visual arts. He shows how in the post-Enlightenment era the aesthetic treatment of the cross widely replaced the dogmatic treatment, and how this thought was translated into popular spirituality, piety, and devotion. The Folly of the Cross shows how classical theology responded to the critiques of modern science, history, Biblical scholarship, and philosophy, and how both classical and modern theology served as the occasions for new forms of representation of Christ's passion in the arts and music.

Author: Richard Viladesau
ISBN-10: 019087600X
ISBN-13: 9780190876005
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Language: English
Published: 06/01/2018
Pages: 282
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.20lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.30w x 1.00d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 01/01/2019