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Angels & Saints: With a Guide to the Illustrations by Mary Wellesley

Angels & Saints: With a Guide to the Illustrations by Mary Wellesley

by Eliot Weinberger

New Directions ·2020 ·160 pages ·Religion
Maybe Someday
Maybe Someday
I Index
47/99
Near the Top

61/99

Critics

Maybe Someday

33/99

Readers

n/a

Scholars

88/99

Rating

34/99

Volume

56/99

Rating

10/99

Volume

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About This Book

Angels have soared through Western culture and consciousness from Biblical to contemporary times. But what do we really know about these celestial beings? Where do they come from, what are they made of, how do they communicate and perceive? The celebrated essayist Eliot Weinberger has mined and deconstructed, resurrected and distilled centuries of theology into an awe-inspiring exploration of the heavenly host. From a litany of angelic voices, Weinberger's lyrical meditation then turns to the earthly counterparts, the saints, their lives retold in a series of vibrant and playful capsule biographies, followed by a glimpse of the afterlife. Threaded throughout Angels & Saints are the glorious illuminated grid poems by the eighteenth-century Benedictine monk Hrabanus Maurus. These astonishingly complex, proto-"concrete" poems are untangled in a lucid afterword by the medieval scholar and historian Mary Wellesley.


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Reviews

"A luminous book, it is illustrated with elaborate gilded grid poems by the ninth-century monk Hrabanus Maurus ..."

Lidija Haas· Harpers Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"He doesn't claim that saints' stories help keep track of time or indeed that they have any purpose at all."

Marina Warner· London Review of Books Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"Academic and lay readers interested in Christian thought will enjoy Weinberger's eclectic homage to angels and saints."

Publishers Weekly Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"The thought-provoking artwork of ninth-century Frankish monk Hrabanus Maurus enhances the text, and the book also includes a guide to the illustrations written by scholar Mary Wellesley ..."

Kirkus Read review ↗ Near the Top

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