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The Geometry of Love
Space, Time, Mystery, and Meaning in an Ordinary Church
by Margaret Visser
ISBN: 0865476187
ISBN-13: 9780865476189
Format: Hardcover
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Summary
Tired of the slingshot tours of medieval churches that only provide building dates and photo-ops, Visser takes her time examining one quaint, Christian church on the outskirts of Rome-the church of Saint Agnes-in meticulous detail. Her book explores the chapel's architecture from front to back and top to bottom, lingering on stories behind key pieces.
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"A mixed bag full of surprises-often erudite, sometimes entertaining."
-- Kirkus
"Margaret Visser...provides super-intelligent expositions of the central tenets and virtues of Christianity (pointing out, for example, how crucial inclusivity was, and is, to its contagiousness as a faith)-a rarer phenomenon than one might think. Thanks to her efforts, next time I am in a church I will look about me with new and wiser eyes." -- Tom Hodgkinson
-- Literary Review
"[Visser's] writing can...be placed in a North American, indeed Emersonian tradition of mystical attentiveness....Seeking to open the springs of the spirit, Margaret Visser has written an ascetic, private, devotional meditation of Christian history, embodied in a church and its bones and stones, which she lovingly numbers." -- Marina Warner
-- New York Times Book Review
"THE GEOMETRY OF LOVE is not a long book, but it is remarkably full of detail-etymologies, saints' lives, papal politics, ecclesiastical architecture, legend, folk practices, art history, all arranged to show how an "ordinary church" embodies the spirituality and history of its people. At times the reader longs to get on with the tour, like a visitor to a fine but exhausting museum. But Visser's charm is considerable, and she often stirs the heart." -- Alan Buster
-- Atlantic Monthly
Bibliographic Details
Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux
Published date: 2001
Edition: 1th edition
Size: 6 x 9 inches
Weight: 1.25 pounds
Pages: 322
Publisher's Notes
Margaret Visser has visited many more churches than most people, but like the rest of us she began to tire of the slew of facts and lack of meaningful information available from guidebooks. The desire to find answers to her own questions as a traveler, a believer, and a first rate scholar with a insatiable curiosity and a gift for revealing the meanings of seemingly ordinary objects led her to undertake this unique and revelatory book.
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The Geometry of Love: Space, Time, Mystery, and Meaning in an Ordinary Church
Margaret Visser
North Point Press. Used - Good. 100% Money Back Guarantee. Shipped daily. Over one million satisfied book lovers read with Experienced Books. 2001. Hardcover. Good condition, showing modest signs of wear. Cover has some wear on edges. Some rubbing on cover. Some aging/yellowing of text pages. Dust jacket: Good. ( more information)
Offered by Experienced Books LLC (United States)
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